The new "alarm" system was tested

yesterday. We had been told about it in advance and people should have been prepared for it.

It did not "fail" if getting those three short and rather quiet beeps was all that was intended. The question of whether it was a success is yet to be answered.

I had explained what would happen to a number of very elderly people I try to keep an eye on. They have phones. They have mobile phones. I have insisted. They can use them to make and receive calls and that is about it. This is the group who are not as active or out and about. They are largely confined to their homes. They do not wish to leave them. The phone is a security measure.

I checked after the test had been made. Seven of the eleven did not hear it. Yes, hearing is failing in the group but it was more than that. The other four heard it with excuses like "but only because I was waiting like you said to". 

The test was, I believe, considered to be "mostly successful" but I believe it needs to be improved, adjusted, reconsidered...something. Human beings do not react to three short, relatively quiet "beeps". Someone I know went to see if the fridge door had been left open. She is an intelligent, able person who is younger than I am. She had forgotten about the test. Would she react in an emergency?

People are not always aware of impending danger even when they are aware of a wildfire in the distance or it has been pouring with rain and the water is rising. They may be distracted by other things even when they are aware of a potentially dangerous situation.  

The alarm needs to be longer and louder. The very least it needs to be is three short beeps repeated three times. That is technically possible and very easy to do. Making it louder may be much more difficult but it needs to be done. Yes, it does go out as a vibration too but it needs more than that. 

We also need more alerts in public areas. Once this would not have been considered important but we no longer live in a relatively "safe" world. There are "incidents" even in this country, even in spaces that were once considered absolutely "safe". I am more likely to look for exits to buildings than I once did.

So yes, test the alarm. Good, it seems to work. That is not the end of the matter though. We need to be alert for each other, not just ourselves.  

Going out to dinner

may well be a regular occurrence for someone like a Prime Minister. It is possibly all too regular. It would certainly happen often. There would be those lunches and breakfasts and "coffee" as well. (Why is it never "tea"?)

It is not the fact that they go to these things. It is where they go and with whom they associate. Those things do matter.

My parents had to face this problem many times. They were part of "the floating population".  It was a term used to describe the people who were there for just a year or two by right of their occupation. They included occupations like teaching, banking, law enforcement and pastoral care. They were people who, by virtue of their occupations, were privy to confidences and a great deal of confidential information. 

In a small country community who you associated with mattered. Of course you talked with everyone but to whose homes did you go? It must often have been very difficult for my parents. It was sometimes difficult for us as children too. We were expected to be "friends" with everyone but not too friendly with anyone.  I am also aware I knew from a very early age about the need to keep quiet about all sorts of things. It was inevitable I would hear concerned parents talking to Mum or the Senior Cat. I was "not to say anything". Since then I have been privy to many more matters of concern than I care to think about. I have signed more than one document requiring me to remain quiet.

I have been thinking about all this as the media has been discussing a dinner attended last week by our Prime Minister. Questions have, rightly, been raised about it. Why did he accept an invitation to a meal at the home of a Chinese businessman whose father has been under review for tax fraud? Where was that very large donation actually coming from? What does the host want in return? 

Yes, there will be something they want in return. People do not donate large sums of money to anything without expecting something in return. It is particularly true of people in that position.

The Prime Minister is using an "I am/was not aware" sort of defence in relation to his attendance. That is nonsense. Prime Ministers have "minders". They are the staff employed to ensure that Prime Ministers and others like them do not accidentally or, worse, deliberately associate with someone who will embarrass the government. Past associations can be dealt with up to a point but the present ones matter. 

I would go so far as to suggest the present one does matter more than people realise. A million dollars for an evening's "work"? It will buy a lot of advertising come election time. It might not even appear like that in the donations list because it will have been divided among the other attendees. 

It is what they will want in return that we need to be concerned about. Yes, they will want something. Nothing is "free" in politics.  

  

Why do they make jam jars

long and skinny now? 

I bought some raspberry jam this week. I do not buy jam very often but a friend wanted "raspberry jam tarts". These were my contribution to the afternoon tea she was having as a fund raiser. 

I am sure my friend thought she was doing me a favour. "All you need to do is buy the jam. S... is buying the pastry cases and she can put them together."

I actually bought both the jam and the pastry cases. The pastry cases are very good being made from real butter. There is no point in trying to make them. S... is "not really a pastry cook" and I am absolutely hopeless at that sort of thing.

The jam? I stood there in front of the jams on the supermarket shelves. There was the cheap jam I remembered from my childhood. It comes in a much smaller jar now. Mum used to tell us that the pips in it were wood chips and we were never allowed to have it at home. I cannot remember eating it anywhere else either but I suppose we must have. Mum made jam but she never made a lot of it. Time and money would have prevented too much jam making.

I ignored the cheap jam from childhood. It would not have been right for the occasion. There was still a choice. I looked. The woman standing next to me looked as well. We looked at each other and she asked me the question I was thinking.

"Why do they make such long, skinny jars these days? Those little round pots looked so much more comfortable."

She was right. The little round pots did look more "comfortable". It is the way jam should look.

"I have to dig it out with a knife," the woman told me, "You end up with it all over your hands. It's a messy business."

It is. It might be another reason I do not often buy jam.  

 I worked out the unit price and the likely quality of the other three brands. One brand is made in the hills behind us. It was "on special". That does not mean much at all of course, or not in the usual way. Right then it meant it was only slightly more expensive than the other brands. I know it is highly regarded and I thought "buy local" and put a jar in the trolley along with the milk and the broccoli and the environmentally friendly bags I put my household rubbish in. 

In the "fast" checkout queue the man behind me, someone I know slightly, said, "I saw that jam is down in price this week but why do they have to package it like that. It's so hard to get at by the time you get near the bottom."

That was two people saying what I was thinking. There must be more people who think the same way. What are the jam makers thinking? 

Happy endings are not always

the best ending to have.

Brother Cat called me last night. We speak to each other on an irregular but reasonably frequent basis, usually around once every two weeks. The other week he will speak to Middle Cat. 

This is not the way it was when the Senior Cat was alive. There were very regular weekly calls on Sundays and, thankfully often, there would be a call sometime during the week as there was something they wanted to share. They did not write letters to each other the way Mum wrote letters. Neither of them felt the need for that.

Now we "keep in touch". Sometimes it is a quick email but we also talk. It is Brother Cat's preferred means of communication. 

He has not been well lately. Part of it is a litany of ageing but some of it has been the side effects of a severe infection he picked up following ankle surgery.  It was more serious than either he or his partner realised and Middle Cat was of the opinion he was lucky not to lose part of a lower limb. Yes, that serious. He has ongoing medical issues. It is a happy but not perfect ending. We may not like it (I certainly do not) but it is life. 

So, we talk...I mostly listen but that is the "big sister" role. When I can get a word in I will ask about his two children (doing well) and his five grandchildren (also doing well even if three of them are sports mad). It is two of the grandchildren who have just been in a youth theatre production of Hans Christian Anderson's "Little Mermaid".

"You know the story?" Brother Cat asked me, "They changed it of course."

Yes, of course they did. You cannot have unhappy endings in a Disney based production. Really you cannot have unhappy endings in anything. It is "just not done". It is "wrong". 

I suppose, for the most part, I agree. We go to the theatre, to see a film or read a book to be entertained...and to be given some hope. The ending does not need to be perfect but if something has been dark then we need some light. 

It is when we do that and change the message of the story that I start to be concerned. In our library I look at the books for children on a regular basis. "Happy endings" are all over the place there but they are often unrealistic endings. It is no exaggeration to say most of the fiction I see will have a "happy" ending. I looked at eleven new books recently, all fiction. All of them dealt with "social issues" and all of them had the obligatory happy ending. They were also designed to make the person with the "issue" the winner and the rest of us feel "guilty".  

Are such books really about "happy endings" or are there for another purpose? Perhaps we need to start thinking that happy endings are not always the answer to everything.     

The Labor party is having their

"gabfest" here this time. The place is being over run with their supporters. I saw a few passing by yesterday. 

These things happen on a regular basis. The "good" and the "great" of the party get together to decide on changes to their "platform". Speeches are made. Decisions are made. Arguments okay, tempers rise and fall. It is all, supposedly, "democratic".

Being "Labor" the union movement is there. The union movement is there in a very big way. It might even be said that "Labor" is still the union movement itself.

Union membership is down dramatically in this country. The old days of compulsory union membership have gone. People are no longer required to be members of any union. There are some areas where not being a member of a union means you might not get employed or you will be under constant pressure to join but this is no longer legal. There are other ways and other means of ensuring your employment is fair and legal now.

The union movement, particularly the more militant sections of it. seem not to have recognised that. Their demands are still strident. The leaders seem to believe they have the right not to simply ask but to demand or even dictate policies across many areas. 

The "Manufacturing Workers Union" is making many such demands. They want a "republic" of course.  The referendum failed "back then" but apparently it would pass now and that is reason enough to do it again. They want the "Union Jack" removed from the flag. It is apparently a "symbol of oppression". They want all the "colonial statues" removed from public places. These are a reminder of our shocking past apparently.

Their demands have gone on from there to changing the date of our national holiday. That is an issue which has been made contentious by activists. We are told it should be a "day of shame". 

The same people want the failed "voice to parliament" revisited. That it failed to get up at a referendum too but apparently we should do it again. It apparently should have got a "majority of people in a majority of the states".  It is a pretty high bar to pass but they think they can do it. All this is couched in high sounding language about indigenous recognition and rights and how the rest of us are "racist".

There are also calls for the "recognition of Palestine" and those who control it. This may actually be impossible under international law but why let that get in the way? 

There is "climate change" of course. Apparently we should be spending a great deal more on that than we are.  It should not be difficult to do.

They want a four day week for the same pay as they are now getting for a five day week. At the same time they want "better working conditions and increased wages". They want "the rich" taxed even more than they are now. 

These things will apparently come up for discussion at their meeting today. They may well get adopted.

Membership of unions in this country has risen slightly since I last looked. It is now around 13.1% of the workforce. It is around 14.0% for women and 12.0% for men. Among the younger generation, those in the  20-24yr group the figure is 7.3% and about 3.7% below that. The AMWU numbers are even smaller of course.

Yet it is these people who will dictate the direction in which the country goes. It seems they are not concerned with the dire state of manufacturing in this country. They apparently believe in some sort of utopia which would be possible if everyone else did as they demand. 

Even in my idealistic teens I did not believe in "communism". Socialism still does not appear to work but they believe it will. I wonder where that leaves the rest of us...and whether they would like it if what they demanded actually happened.  

Yes domestic violence is a "two" issue

but perhaps not quite in the way some people think.

The red headed politician some of us love to loathe said something about this yesterday and was immediately castigated for it. She was saying DV is a "two way street" - that women are also able to commit domestic violence.  

Yes, that is true. It is something which is often overlooked. It may not even be recognised. Women are generally smaller and not as strong as men. The form the violence takes can be different too.

But is throwing a pan of hot chip fat or hurling the iron at someone really any different? There are women who have done that. There are women who have assaulted their parters, who have murdered them or their children.  It may not, thankfully, be nearly as common but it does happen.

I thought about this after hearing the complaints about what was said. I thought back to a family I knew in my childhood. He was the only policeman in a small country town. She was his shrewish partner. As an adult I can recognise that the marriage was not in good shape. The children were not well cared for and frequently had bruises from the beatings given them - given them by their mother, not their father. Divorce was much more difficult then and the children would have been put in the care of their mother, not their father. The couple stayed together and the children suffered the consequences. I met one of them years later and none of them had made a success of their lives.

I wonder how different it is now when it is the woman rather than the man - or even perhaps both of them - who are the perpetrators of the violence? What about the children? It is surely a "two way street" then...so called adults and the children. 

Not all women are natural mothers, nor do they want to be. They do not "love" their children. The children happened. They wish they had never had them. They do not want the responsibility for them. 

As a teacher I actually had mothers who told me that. "I'll be glad when they are off my hands" was said with the sort of vehemence that tells you it is actually true. Their children are fed and clothed but they are regarded as a nuisance, something that gets in the way of what the adult wants to do.  They can cope with the financial "burden" but giving up time as well is too much. In the worst cases it leads to physical violence and even death but, for many, it is the emotional violence which does so much harm. Yes, it is violence if you are constantly being told you are not wanted, a burden, or someone cannot wait to be rid of you. 

Adults saying that sort of thing to one another as well is another form of abuse. It is very harmful both to the person it is directed at and to those around them. It is a type of violence but because nobody shows any physical signs it is too often ignored.

Relationships are of course incredibly complex things but castigating someone for saying domestic violence is a "two way street" is to ignore the harm done - and how it can be done. I remember the policeman's children and how the harm done followed them into adulthood. Was it then directed on to the next generation? Quite probably it was.   

There are more complaints about the "night life"

strip in this city. Apparently it is "run down" and the "lock out" laws are harming business. There seem to be a plethora of "massage parlours" and "illicit tobacco shops", to say nothing of the "convenience" stores.

I have not been "down the strip" for a long time. I have had no need to go. There is a very nice bookshop at the far end but I can deal with them on line. The woman working there actually advised me not to come in. "It's a bit rough around here."

Yes, it is. I used to go backwards and forwards along it for one year of secondary school and then in my three years at teacher training college. Once in a while, when I was feeling rich, I would stop at the only place in the city which sold some very nice lemon gelati. That place has long since gone of course. 

There are some odd little eating spots. I would not consider eating at most of them. There is often the distinct smell of "pot" about them or on the street. You need to be aware of where you are walking because there are syringes lying around.

The owners of the "places of the night" want the area "cleaned up". They want the "lock out" laws done away with altogether. They would like a greater police presence - but just to be there as "visible", not to ruin business. They want to be rid of the "trouble makers", those who have had too much alcohol or are in the grips of a violent drug episode.

Reading all this I am reminded of the story the Senior Cat used to tell about his only run in with the police as a teenager. As he told it he and a group of mates, including my godfather, were carrying a heavy double bed across the old swing bridge over the river near the docks. It was dark and they, as teenagers will, were making a bit of noise. A police car stopped them and wanted to know what they were doing. Why were they carrying a bed?

It was of course one of the props for a play the PFA (Presbyterian Fellowship Association) was going to put on. They had borrowed it from somewhere. They were making their own entertainment - and entertainment for other people. It cost them very little. It taught them a lot about each other, about working together, about all the things involved in putting on any sort of entertainment. The vast majority of the marriages in that group lasted too.

I wonder what would happen if we did away with all the "night life" of this strip now? It would of course have a very big negative economic impact on the "entertainment" industry. We would also have a generation of "bored" youth who would need to be taught to entertain themselves. The generation which came after that might be a little more able to look after their own interests but I suspect it would take more than that. 

We might be trying to deny under 16s access to social media but that is not going to teach them to entertain themselves. The bright lights of night life on the strip beckon as soon as they are old enough to be out without parental supervision.  We need to teach children to entertain themselves so that teenagers and young adults can do it too. I doubt we are doing that. 

Changing the name of an electorate

may or may not seem important to most people. It might come down to whether you live in the electorate or know how to spell the new or old name for it. Ask some people and, even in a country with compulsory attendance at the ballot box, they will not be able to tell you the name of the electorate they live in. Yes, this is true. I have heard people telling electoral officials they do not know. These people have simply arrived at the closest polling station. 

Then there is the other cause of confusion, a name change. Why change something which people know? 

This has just happened in this state. The geographically biggest electorate has had a name change. It was done without any consultation or discussion. It has simply happened. It will no longer go by the name of a former governor of the state. It will now go by the name of an indigenous activist.

There are many people who will see this as right and proper and a good thing. Certainly the person it will now be named after did a great deal of good in her lifetime. It is no bad thing to see her honoured in some way but was this appropriate? There is a suburb in the nation's capital named after a late indigenous person. Was that appropriate?

Our national multicultural and indigenous news service give a warning at the beginning of a news story that might contain the image or name of someone who has died - that is, the name or image of an indigenous person. If that is so important then why is the electoral commission changing a name to that of someone of such importance to the indigenous community if that person is no longer alive? 

The suburb in the nation's capital was named for a man who was also a Senator. There are other suburbs named for similar reasons. Some might want to say it was named for someone who was indigenous but it was his service as a Senator which was honoured. That is not the case with the other name change. It is being done to recognise her service to indigenous issues. Whether that is right or wrong is a separate issue but the proposal should, at very least, have been put to the indigenous people who live in the electorate. 

Our local council has gone ahead with name changes which supposedly reflect the indigenous history of the area. Local history is being lost to names many people no longer recognise, do not know and cannot spell. They do not know how to say them. We are told that these names are the original, indigenous names for places and that changing them is being done out of "respect".  The reality is that nobody really knows what the original names were. Is that respect or is it something else?

Name changes may sometimes need to occur. In this instance it might have been better to wait until an entirely new electorate was formed and then used that name.  

There is more than one sort of "multiculturalism"

and it is time we recognised this and discussed it.

Talking about "multiculturalism" and how wonderful it is has been one of those "big" issues recently. The government loves to tell us how wonderful it is. Others are being a bit more cautious.

I came across the idea that not everyone lived the way we did very early in life. One of my early memories is of being swung high in the air by a "black" man who, at least to me, appeared to be very big. He wore a "skirt" and he spoke a little differently.  He had "talked in church" and now he was with us for Sunday lunch.  He was of course a missionary. He came from Tonga. My brother and I thought he was fascinating. He was good with children, full of interesting stories. We met him several more times over the years as he came backwards and forwards for various purposes. He taught us a lot.  

The same church, of which Grandpa was an "Elder", sponsored a considerable number of migrants from Holland in the fifties and sixties. These were people who had been traumatised by war. They had very little. The role of the church was to see them provided with housing, the basics of life and work. Grandpa must have called in many favours in and around the docks.  

Their ability to speak English varied but, with adults, they made the effort. My paternal grandmother, with just three years of schooling herself, took on the role of accidental teacher of English as she introduced the women to the shops and other services.  That they needed to learn English and do it quickly was never questioned. At home they spoke Dutch. If we visited they would speak to our parents in English. We children were spoken to in Dutch, just as their own children were spoken to. We were permitted to respond in English of course - their own children did!  

The food was a little different. I remember staying with them and being given, as a very special treat, appelbeignets - apples fried in batter. There were other little things, like removing our shoes before going inside, that made them "different" but I simply accepted it all just as I accepted the Serbian woman who lived next door to us would point to something and ask "You say?" and I would tell her the English word. She always wore a headscarf. It would be tied behind her head at home and under her chin if she was going shopping. 

Those migrants kept their language at home. They expected to speak English at the shops or in the workplace. Their children "picked it up" at school. They had traditions. Our Dutch friends celebrated more on Christmas Eve than Christmas Day and we found that interesting but we were not expected to do it ourselves. Gradually they became part of daily life. There are still the occasional reminders of where their families come from but they have blended in.

And there is the other sort of "multiculturalism" brought in by people whose backgrounds are so very different from mine. They also speak a different language at home. Where I understood some Dutch simply because the language was so close to English I did not and still do not understand any Vietnamese or Chinese or any of the languages of the Indian sub-continent. Their food and their traditions are very, very different. It is all fascinating. We can buy some of those things in shops. Some of the most common items, such as rice noodles, can be bought in the supermarket. 

Middle Cat often goes to a Chinese grocery store because they stock a particular brand of soy sauce and several other items which are useful.  If you go in there you will rarely hear English spoken apart from what is absolutely essential in order to do business. These people are polite but it is clear their world is not our world. They see no need to speak English as our Dutch friends did. They do not need it. They have their festivals and family occasions and see no need to integrate the way the former migrants did.

And now we have more migrants from other places, many of them refugees. Some of them mix even less. There are some who speak no English, who rely on the many interpreter services. They are keeping as close as they can to their language, their traditions, their food and their old way of life.  For some of them I suspect it is because, for all they have been told they are welcome, they are homesick. This is still a strange country for them. They want it to be like "home" but it isn't.

I wonder how much allowing, even encouraging, them to keep all this is helping them. Should more be demanded of them? As someone asked me yesterday when we were trying to sort out a problem, "When does multiculturalism divide us?" 

Losing your licence to drive because

you are no longer fit to drive is not something that happens often. It should almost certainly happen more often than it does.

Someone I know has just lost her licence. She is eighty-two and was asked to undergo a practical test. That has just happened. She failed the test. 

I knew about this in advance. I also thought she would fail the test. It is very likely she should have ceased driving several years ago. She has had several "accidents" which were clearly related to her abilities - or lack thereof.

Naturally this has upset her a great deal. It is more serious for her than it is for many people because she also has a serious mobility disability. She lives alone and lives some distance from most of the services she needs to access. Even before the loss of her licence someone else was taking her to do her shopping.  Now she will need to make more arrangements and use taxis more often. She will get half price fares for now.

I am both relieved she is no longer driving but concerned because it will isolate her even more.  Although she has staff from a nearby nursing home coming in each day to check she does not seem to have any friends. Her days are spent "gardening", doing jigsaw puzzles and knitting while listening to radio or watching television. She lives too far from me for me to visit. I tried to work out possible ways of getting to her using public transport but the journey is just not realistic. We talk on the phone quite frequently...at least, she talks and I listen.

Each time the driving issue came up for her in the last few years I have thought of the Senior Cat. I will be forever grateful he had the courage to make the decision to hand in his licence when he did. He was not a "good" driver but he was no better or worse than the vast majority of people who get behind the wheel of a car. He did not enjoy driving. It was simply convenient. He switched to his "mini-car" - his gopher. It allowed him to go to church, to the doctor, the library and the shopping centre. Middle Cat and friends and taxis did the rest. 

The problem for the person who has just lost her licence is that she has none of those things. She could still ride a gopher. There is one in the house which belonged to her husband. It has not been used for some years. The battery would need to be replaced and the rest of it checked over but there is no reason to believe it could not be used. I have suggested doing it but nothing has been done. It is like getting a mobile phone. She started that process but has not completed it. There is a computer in the house that has not been used for a decade and is probably not able to be used now. Other things need to be dealt with but she procrastinates. Well all procrastinate perhaps but her procrastination is chronic.

Her BIL, the only "family" she is in touch with, tells me her place is much untidier than the way the Senior Cat and I lived...and we were not "tidy" people. I am not a tidy person but I do like cleanliness and things do eventually get put away.  Her place is littered with things and I suspect the effort of putting them away is just too great.

I also think she is depressed although I doubt she realises it. The lack of a licence is not going to help that.  

She likes to read. The next time I speak to her I might mention the library service which delivers books on a regular basis...and I must make the effort to phone her more often.   

   

No it is not "stolen"

but try to explain the "stolen" idea to a ten year old. 

I had one of those disturbing conversations with a ten year old yesterday. He has been well, too well, taught about "stolen" land at school. He has been taught the land we now live in and on, that we were both in and on, was "stolen" from aboriginal people "back in 1832". 

That he could do absolutely nothing about this was completely beside the point. He was supposed to feel guilty about it. He had no control at all about what his ancestors did but it was "wrong" and he is the one who has to feel "sorry".

We actually have a "Sorry Day". It comes around every year and, unless you are aboriginal, you are expected to apologise for those past wrongs all over again. "It's a big thing at school," my young informant told me.

It should not be but I know it is. I listened as he went on to tell me about the "very special belonging they have to all the land and everything". He has been thoroughly indoctrinated about these things and many people will believe it is a very good thing. 

He has not been allowed to question. The idea that there might even be any questions about these "facts" had not even occurred to him.

The "connection to country" is something which is often talked about in relation to aboriginal cultures in this country. It is given special consideration when planning issues come up, when sentencing is being done, when hurt and harm are being considered. Activists like to mention it frequently.

There were more than two hundred and fifty languages once spoken by indigenous people and I wonder if there was a word for any of them that describes that connection between the land, particular places within it and their ancestry. I tried finding a word in the language of the plains people on which this city is built. The closest I could come up with was "yerta". That word seems to mean "country" but it does not seem to cover any sort of emotional attachment. That seems to be a much wider issue, one for which there is no specific word. 

I do not doubt the idea exists now but did it exist when the first white settlers arrived? Did the indigenous population of that time actually think in those terms? Of course they had a connection with the land. Their very survival depended on it. It was a practical connection, not a philosophical one. It was essential to the way they explained the world around them and the dangers they faced. And yes, they were capable of an emotional connection because of the physical connection.

The problem seems to be that the idea of belonging, if that is what it is, is now being described in words and ideas belonging to another culture entirely. It is useful to be able to describe it in these terms because it can be used as a grievance tool, a claim of theft. Doing it this way actually takes even more. It does not allow any connection to be felt free of all the negativity and claims of harm.

There is a similar idea about connection to country in Scots Gaelic. "Duthchas" can, I think, be translated as the connection between a place, the land around it and your ancestry. I cannot think of a similar equivalent in English but it is part of my Scots ancestry. It is an idea of "attachment". It could also be one of "grievance" for those who lost their land during the infamous clearances. Demands for "reparations" or "compensation" or apologies from present day inhabitants would get nowhere.

They do things differently here. I wonder what the ten year old would make of duthchas. 

 

Why is good food so expensive?

Our local shopping centre has been running one of the "school holiday programs" designed to pull people in and get them to spend money.  They cost a lot to run of course but the centre management must think it is worthwhile and that all those running a business there will benefit...and therefore contribute to the cost.

There has been the usual "face painting", some messy sort of craft (definitely fun), balloons being tied into various shapes (and bursting of course) and a "tiny town" with big cardboard structures I would have loved playing with as a kitten. There was also a wheel of some sort where you could spin it and "win" a prize of some sort. 

The prizes seem to have been small packets of crisps or similar sorts of food. One of the local grandmothers spoke to me as I was passing and asked with a sigh, "Why is good food so expensive? They could have been handing out pieces of fruit but I suppose the cost was too much."

Yes, she was almost certainly correct. It was likely cheaper to hand a child a small packet of highly processed, salty something or other with little or no food value than offer them an apple grown in the hills behind us...and they are more likely to eat the contents of the packet.

It is of course the same story inside any supermarket. The white "own brand" bread kept fresh with a lot of preservatives is just over half the price of the "speciality" less processed loaves. Soft drinks are cheaper than milk. In the meat area the sausages (with goodness' knows what in them) are cheaper than a chop but all the meat is more expensive than buying a ready made "pizza". 

Right now, in the middle of our winter, the locally grown fruit is mostly apples, oranges and mandarins. They may be local but they are not cheap. We can still get bananas all year round and, now, it seems strawberries and even raspberries. The cost is enormous and the quality is not as good as the "in season" fruit. 

There was a glut of cauliflower recently. I heard people complaining. The problem seemed to be that many people had no idea what to do with "so much" cauliflower. Aubergine? Most people just continue on to the next vegetable? Leeks appear only in tinned soup with less than three stars on the label but it is much cheaper to buy than even just one leek. Peas and beans are in the freezer section with the mix filled out with lots of relatively cheap and filling sweetcorn.

As a person living alone I do not need five kilo bags of potatoes but I wonder why someone shopping for four teenage boys ignores those in favour of a kilo of frozen "chips". The cost for the former was just a little more but would have ended up less per meal. 

The man who runs our greengrocery was looking carefully at a box of something the other day. "It will have to do but let customers know that we aren't happy with it. It's just the best we can get."  

Opposite the greengrocery there is a "fish shop". It is such a far cry from the way my paternal grandfather bought the Friday fish that I barely recognise it. We might not have been Catholics but we ate fish on Fridays. Grandpa would buy it direct from whichever boat had brought in something they thought worthy of selling to a man who knew a good meal when he saw one.  The price of fish is far beyond the budget of most families.

I will go and buy milk today. The cost of milk has increased dramatically recently but the dairy farmer is getting less. I am aware of how hard they work even now that "it's all computerised" and the computer tells them just how much to feed the cow and how much milk the individual cow has produced. It is still cheaper to buy artificially flavoured carbonated water which is loaded with sugar that someone had to produce in a factory and involves even more production. Why is milk more expensive? 

I am grateful I can still afford to eat but it would be good to know that the good stuff is at least just as cheap as everything else. 

  

There is an overflowing letterbox

in the bank of letterboxes belonging to the group of units I live in. The tenant for that unit is currently absent and nobody is clearing it.

Yesterday a parcel delivery person told me it needed to be cleared. Nothing else can go into it. No, he did not have a parcel to deliver but something had apparently fallen out and he was trying to do the right thing and put it back in. He saw me and asked me to clear it.

I cannot do that. It is not legal to empty someone else's mail box, even if you know the person is not there. You need authority to do it. I do not even know the tenant's name. I do not know where she currently is or why she is absent.  

I left an email for the "management" person who is supposed to be responsible for problems. There was an automated response.He is on sick leave. I have now left a message for the long-suffering person who is the "chair" of the resident's association. No doubt she will respond in due course. I am hoping she knows who the owner is and they can deal with the problem their tenant is causing.

Yes, it is a problem. It informs the world that nobody is there at that unit. Those with "intentions" will be "interested". They need to go past all the other units to get to that unit. The mail needs to be collected and dealt with anyway. Obviously the tenant does not have a computer or access one anywhere else. There is far too much mail for that.

That it is a problem at all interests me. According to the local "postie" the other residents get very little actual mail. Most of my mail goes to the post office box associated with my work. That makes sense to me. It is secure. I can access that box at any time. Like most people I know I get much less actual mine than I once did. I am, reluctantly, forced to use email for many things. There are companies which, wrongly, refuse to deal with matters any other way. I say "wrongly" because they assume that everyone has access to a computer and is able to use it with confidence. I know this not to be true. The argument that "anyone can use a computer at the library" is not the answer to everything.

There was a long ago time when the postman (never a woman) would deliver twice a day from Monday to Friday and once on Saturdays. They would blow a whistle if they dropped mail into your letter box. Most people had mail several times a week. There were the dreaded "window" envelopes with the bills and the letters with copperplate addressing from "aunty" so-and-so, birthday cards and Christmas cards, invitations and newsletters. I know that being sent outside by a grandparent to "see what the postman left" and bring it in was something you could do from the time you could reach and empty the box.  Posting letters was fun too.

Most of that has stopped now. I doubt childhood is as much fun in many ways. Too much happens on a screen.  

 

Bullying in sport?

Anyone who knows me well knows I am not interested in sport. I did not grow up in a family which suffered from "footy fever" or which went through agonies over a missed catch. The Senior Cat, Brother Cat and I spent our Saturdays doing other things.  We did not go along and cheer or boo from the sidelines.

Mum tried in a half hearted sort of way because she thought playing sport was a healthy activity. It was one of the "agree to disagree" areas of her married life. Had she been a little more determined it might have led to conflict but it might have thrown a spotlight on my complete inability to participate in competitive sport. That was something she wished to avoid. She was also aware that the Senior Cat could not see the various balls coming towards him and that throwing a ball he did manage to catch was likely to result in a dislocated shoulder. These were things even thinking about were best avoided.

Middle Cat and the Black Cat were those who did as I suspect she secretly wished. They played netball and basketball at first. Middle Cat went on to play just about every ball game available, two at "state" level. 

It is those earlier games I am now wondering about, those played by Middle and Black Cat when they were still in the very junior teams. Who refereed them? How seriously were they taken?

From memory adults refereed them. They were played on a "it would be nice to win but the world won't end if we don't" basis. All this took place out in rural areas. Getting on with your more distant neighbours was just as important as getting on with you immediate neighbours. There was a vague awareness some children were much better (and much keener) than others but sport was not an all consuming pastime. There were plenty of other things to keep you occupied. 

Apparently it is very different now. My witterings yesterday caused someone to inform me about how important sport was, how important it was to "win", how much time and money it cost. The person who informed me was apparently aware of the article in this morning's paper saying there is a red card system to prevent onlookers from being abusive at basketball games. Apparently winning is now so important parents are abusing the often very young referees. Those young referees are in training but this does not matter. Winning is what matters.

I am reminded too of an incident in the supermarket. It was years ago now but everyone must have heard the father shouting at his son. The father was shouting he did not care if his child wanted to play football or not. He, the father, wanted him to play - and not just play but win. That, he told his child, was all that mattered. Even now I wonder what happened to the child. He would now be an adult. It was bullying but happened so long ago nobody would have intervened. Now I also wonder how many other parents bully their children into competitive sport without the child being aware of it. How many children are told they will be rewarded for winning but get cold disapproval when they lose?  Are parents even aware they are behaving this way? When did winning become more important than playing for pleasure? Is this worse than giving every child who participates a prize? 

There seem to be mixed messages here. I am confused.  Isn't losing as much a part of life as winning? I lost out a lot as a child. I suspect most of us did. We are still here.   

Bullying is not

acceptable at any time and it does not matter whether the person is a child or an adult.

I was sent an email yesterday. "Is this okay?" I was asked. The person sending it was forwarding yet another email, one they had received.

That email contained details of an "annual general meeting". It is for a group of "units" (condominiums to Americans). Under the law people are required to attend it, send a proxy or somehow participate. It is not something which, like many other "AGMs" can be ignored.

Some groups of units have an external management company handling many matters. Meetings are generally held at those headquarters and at their convenience. Small groups do not always have any external management. They can manage their own affairs provided the relevant legislation is being abided by.  Meetings for such groups, perhaps a group of three to around seven units will usually be held in the unit belonging to one of the residents.

And that is where the problems for this group of units has suddenly become even more serious. It is a small group. It has been well maintained and there should not be any problems but there are. One owner is not an occupier. The unit is rented and the owner clearly sees it as an investment. That is fair enough but the owner is not making life easy for the other three owners. 

They have taken on the role of "presiding officer/secretary" for the group. It is not a popular job with most people but they were keen to take it. An attempt to have a management company handle the affairs of the four owners failed because this person made so many demands of the company they refused to continue working with them.

What they do not seem to want to accept is that it is does not give them the right to do as they wish or bully others into doing their bidding. They have tried to demand access to the unit belonging to another owner on the grounds they are "permitted" to check on what is there and the condition it is in. There is no such right under the law. It has to be by invitation or an actual emergency. They have objected to a legal, council approved addition which was there before they bought their unit. They have objected to a legal fence between two of the units even though the fence is not on common property. It is not even visible from the unit they own or any neighbouring property. 

They have clearly decided to take matters further. The email informed the other three residents of when the AGM would be held. It would not be held at the units. It is proposed to hold it in a board room belonging to a legal firm which specialises in issues around groups of units. The email mentions the cost charged per hour.  Yes, it is a steep cost. All this has been done without consulting all the other owners. 

A query has been made. Yes, the law firm will have someone present as "an observer". The observer only has the right to speak if the presiding officer allows this to happen. The presiding officer also has the power to prevent other observers attending the meeting. They cannot prevent a proxy from attending but using a proxy raises other issues. 

The email also states "offensive, disruptive and disrespectful behaviour will not be tolerated". I doubt that came from any lawyer but it is there and the intention is clear. 

There is more of course. The relatively new and very quiet owner of one unit is feeling understandably frightened, especially as her command of English (while generally excellent for everyday purposes) does not extend to a quick understanding of legal terms and applications. 

I do not have to deal with this situation and I am for that I am thankful. My response to the content of the email forwarded to me however was, "No, this is not okay. It is likely it is intended to intimidate."

"Was he old?"

or perhaps "Do you know how old he was?" or "Was he too old?"

There were some comments this morning about one of the American Senators. He has died very suddenly and he was "only 71".

Seventy-one is not "old" now. The expectation of "three score years and ten" has increased - at least in the minds of most people. We no longer wonder so much at those who live to a hundred or more. 

Not everyone does of course. I knew someone two years younger than I am. They died recently and a death like that does make me "stop and think". 

But there is also the other age related issue. When do you become "too old" to do something. There is legislation which is supposed to prevent age related discrimination but there are also other regulations which require "retirement" at certain ages. There has been some recognition that it might be wise not to permit people continuing to work beyond a certain age. It can give younger people a chance to take on those roles as well as ensuring people do not continue to do work they are no longer fit to do. 

I know one organisation where people on "the council" are required to retire at seventy-five. Bringing younger people is essential to the smooth running of the organisation and a major state event.  What they need is the "overlap" to allow information to be handed on. 

One of the local retired priests spends a greater part of the week sitting in a small coffee area in the shopping centre. He will drink coffee and read the paper. He is also available not as "the priest" now but simply as someone with whom to talk. The talk might be about anything. It could be the weather, sport, something happening in the community or, just occasionally, it might be a problem. That does not happen often and he is very careful not to interfere in anyway but he is there. The owners of the coffee area welcome him. He brings in business and they know he is still performing a welcome service to the community. 

I know of someone else who volunteers at a charity. She can no longer do the "running around" but she can sit at the cash register and deal with the customers. Some of the customers can be "difficult" in that particular location. More than once she has rung me to say someone has "forgotten their glasses" and could I "pop in and read some forms" to them. At eighty-nine she is still able but she has made a firm decision to "retire" on her ninetieth birthday. "I need a bit of a rest dear. The garden needs attention." I would very much like to be that able at that age.

There are rules about judges retiring here. They need to go at seventy but they can be called back for "inquiries". I once had to appear in front of one. He was in his later seventies by then but still sharp. It was one of those occasions when I was very glad I had done my homework. His predecessor was another one who did not simply give up working. He spent many hours helping young law students through the intricacies of constitutional law.

And there was the American senator who died so suddenly. No cause of death had been given at the time I started to write this but of course a "heart attack" comes to mind. I know very little of the man's politics but I wonder about his personal life. If he could suddenly return would he wonder if he should retire? Was there anything he wanted to do when he finally "retired" or was he simply someone who had no reason to retire?

I am still doing some work but I no longer work the very long hours I was once expected to work. I have refused. It has not always been easy. I can still put in more time than I would like but I try not to do it because, selfishly, there are things I want to do as well. I hope those things might give some others pleasure but they are not vital. Is this the way it should be or should we expect to go on working while we can? 

Oh the outrage

because a Senator "claimed an elderly person had died as a result of the recent telecommunications outage". There are demands for her resignation. The Senator apparently told a reporter to leave her property. 

It is a little more complicated than that of course. The Senator apparently "tweeted" something that was an error of judgment. It would have been better left unsaid but it was said. The Senator was "acting on information given her at the time" and she has apologised for that and for any distress caused to the family.  

Apparently that is not enough for her political opponents or the media. They want her resignation. Why? I would not have thought it was a hanging offence.

The "boss" of the telecommunications company is being faced with similar demands to be "held to account". She just happened to be in Europe on a long planned and legitimate break but somehow she is responsible for something going wrong and it not being fixed immediately. That she is not a technician and has not set the system up is beside the point according to the government and the media. The system has to work flawlessly. The country depends on it.

Any Downunderites old enough to read this will also remember a previous Prime Minister being out of the country on holiday when a number of serious fires broke out. Now the fires were not started by him. It is the responsibility of the state's to fight fires. There was absolutely nothing he could do. Unlike another former Prime Minister he was not a volunteer fire fighter. He was much more likely to get in the way and take away time from those who were organising the ground operations. None of that mattered to the then Opposition or the media. He was excoriated by the Opposition in the media and snide comments were made about his fire-fighting predecessor as well. It was as if all the volunteer hours of the latter counted for nothing. He was not there for "just a couple of hours" as the media tried to suggest.

All this is interesting because in the past week or so our present Prime Minister has made more than one very serious error of judgment. Yes, he was criticised. There were some suggestions he should resign but the "outrage" has simply not been there. 

I was told, "Oh it's because they (the media) don't want to upset the visit from the Indian Prime Minister." Really? Is that all there was to it? 

I suppose it has nothing at all to do with the size of the Indian community in a state which has an election coming up, an election  both the state and federal government are concerned about. They may not lose the election but they are still worried about the potential size of the drop in support. 

The Senator at the beginning of this made an error of judgment. We all do that. I am guilty of many. Hers was not a hanging offence. She does not need to resign. The same goes for the head of the telecommunications company. She cannot be held responsible for a technical problem outside her area of expertise. It is like asking the administrator of a hospital to be responsible for a failure of a well   qualified surgeon when something goes wrong. The Prime Minister is however responsible for the two deliberate and inappropriate choices he has made recently. They could and should have been avoided - but where is the "outrage"?

  

Getting vaccinated or avoiding it?

There was an article in our state newspaper this week about the way in which some parents are deliberately failing to vaccinate their children. They are also finding ways around the requirement for children to be vaccinated before they go to day care, pre-school, school and more. Some of them are boasting about their refusal to vaccinate their children and informing others of how they get around the rules.

The damage done by Andrew Wakefield and the false claim that "autism" was caused by the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine is ongoing. There are still people who believe the completely discredited claim. It has apparently gone even further than that because another short article in the same newspaper was attempting to debunk the claim a common painkiller, Panadol, also caused similar harm.

The MMR vaccine was not available when I was child. We had to go through measles, mumps and "German measles" (rubella). Children died of measles. I went to school with someone whose sibling died. He may have been health compromised as well but had he not caught measles he may still be alive today. 

Brother Cat and I are too old to have had the MMR vaccine. Middle Cat had it rather late. Only the Black Cat had it at the time it became available. Brother Cat and I also went through the measles, the mumps, rubella and the usual influenza.  

I am acutely aware of the vaccine issue because my mother did not believe in vaccinations. This was part of her "Christian Science" upbringing. We had vaccinations that became available and as recommended entirely because the Senior Cat or my grandmother took us and my godmother (a triple-certificated nursing sister) informed them of when it should be done.  When we were ill it was my paternal grandmother who nursed us.  I suppose we were fortunate in that we did not become so seriously ill we needed to be in hospital with any of those things. It did not mean we would not have welcomed "Mum" being available when we felt so miserable.

I know Mum also claimed that her cousin was intellectually disabled because his parents had him vaccinated. This was not true but it was used as a more acceptable excuse than the reality. She had no contact with him. It is possible she genuinely believed he had died although he was much younger and outlived her by many years. Later  I came across another family who told others the same thing. Everyone said how dreadful it was that vaccination caused him to be intellectually disabled and non-speaking. In reality, like my mother's cousin, he had not been vaccinated until after his disabilities were evident. 

I have had various vaccinations since then. I could not have visited the Senior Cat without them. The same still applies to my occasional visits into aged care now.  I see far too many very elderly people (90 years plus) in the local shopping centre or the library or just around and about to risk passing something on. Our GP insists on Middle Cat and I being up to date because she knows we see so many older people.  

And it seems to me that it is the same at the other end of life. Very young children do not have the same immunity. Middle Cat still has not seen her youngest nephew-by-marriage for that reason. His mother, rightly or wrongly, is not having visitors until he has at least some level of immunity.

So why would you refuse to allow your child to be vaccinated? Are vaccines really that harmful? Sri Lanka is going through a measles outbreak right now. It is a disease which, like polio, could be wiped out. Do we really want children to spend seventy-three years of their lives in an "iron lung" because they have not been vaccinated? I think the recently deceased woman who endured that would say "Get vaccinated."  

Artificial imagination is

not a "thing". It does not exist. It cannot exist.

There has been more than one post about a magazine changing their publication policy. In order to save money they will no longer pay authors for short stories. Instead they will use "artificial intelligence" to write the stories and readers will be told they come from "the fiction team". 

Yes, it is possible to ask "AI" to write something but what will it produce? There is an enormous amount of material out there AI can draw on. Does this mean AI can produce something genuinely creative? Will it be the sort of writing people will want to read?

As mere kittens my brother I went through quite a lot of Enid Blyton and Biggles and other "series". We mostly borrowed them from friends because our parents were not keen on them. We read them because we read anything we could get. Did we enjoy them? Yes, of course - in an surfeit of sugar type of way. We grew into more serious writing very quickly. The Senior Cat made sure we could borrow from the Children's Library and then the children's section of the Country Lending Service. I will be forever grateful that he knew how important reading was and how much it meant to us.

I looked at a couple of Enid Blyton books recently. I was waiting for a friend whose daughter is young enough to be "going through that phase". Both the books I looked at did not appeal at all. The characters were flat. The action non-existent or ridiculous.  They might well have appealed to me as a child who was desperate to read but they no longer interested me. The same is probably true of many adults now. 

I suspect the stories produced by AI will be much the same as those written by Enid Blyton.  They will be written to a formula. They will be predictable. There will be variations on the "beautiful" and the "handsome" but they will still end "happily ever after".  

This is not good writing. It is not writing at all. It will not flow and take the reader along with it. I do not see how AI can ever achieve those little things which allow us to see the world in new ways.  All AI is really doing is drawing on what is already there. It cannot imagine. It may seem as if it can but it cannot. 

I know I am not explaining this well but I cannot help hoping AI cannot "imagine" my cathedral cats. If AI can do that then there is nothing left for us to create...and I think we were born with the capacity to create. 

There was an "outage" yesterday

and it seems there was chaos with it. A major communications network was "down" and it seems we could not cope. 

The transport system was badly affected. Some train services were not able to run. Buses had problems too. Traffic lights were "out" everywhere. (At least one lot was flashing red though so I imagine patience was what was really needed in many places.)

People could not make or receive calls, not even 000 was working. They apparently missed about three hundred and thirty calls. Yes, I do consider the latter to be serious. It is serious, very serious. At the same time I suspect many other phone calls could wait. This is the school holiday period so traffic was lighter than usual and not so many people were dropping their children off.

It was not possible to look at the internet on your phone on the way to work. No, it was not the internet that was down. It was the phone network. That is a problem. What on earth do you do? Sit on the bus and stare at the scenery? Read an actual book? Talk to your neighbour? I suspect most people just stared impatiently ahead of them. 

The supermarkets and other shops had problems because people could not pay for goods. Most people do not seem to have any cash. All sorts of other transactions were also halted. People could not phone an order to a business.

Yes, there were major problems and I do not want suggest they were not serious. They were serious. It was alarming to realise just how vulnerable we are when a major system fails. This is why the "renewable energy" ideal is not the answer to everything. When did you physically last check on someone during an outage?

For those of you in Upover, here is Spooner's cartoon showing our "renewable energy Minister" trying to dial the emergency number in Downunder.