Our relations with China have

taken a turn for the better - if you believe the Chinese.

The Foreign Minister in the new Downunder government is of course of Chinese heritage even if she was born in Malaysia. Maybe that helps too.

But let's be quite clear about it. What really helps is that China sees the new government as being much closer to China in terms of ideology. They also perceive the new government to be weaker and more malleable.

That may or may not be the case. It hasn't really been tested yet but I have been told that this is what China wants to believe. They consider the new government to have "values closer to ours".  They also believe "it will be easier for them to understand how to do business". That is of course how to do business on Chinese terms. It is not the same as doing business with America or France or Finland...or just about anywhere else - including some countries in Asia. 

I know of more than one person here who has business interests in China - and wish they didn't need them. They do business with China because they must. The Chinese market is enormous but if they could find another market as big they would go there instead. There are simply too many difficulties doing business with China. Not only do they have to go through all the stated rules - and they are many - they have to go through all the unstated rules. There are laws about where and when and how things must happen and who you need to go through and what permissions must be obtained from which departments. All that is understandable to a degree but it is also complex. As someone once put it to me "the rules about the length of a banana for the European Union are nothing compared with the size of a mere label in China" - and yes, they are just about as silly as that bit of nonsense. 

But it is the unwritten law which is so much harder to understand. It is about things like not approaching the wrong official or the wrong person within a company. It is about "paying" someone - and how much you pay them. Do you pay them again if you do business again or is that a one-off? If the delay occurs at their end then are you responsible for the "fine" or is the Chinese company which causes the delay responsible? (You can however be pretty sure you will be held responsible.) 

The Chinese believe they have the upper hand in all this. They actually do have the upper hand in many ways. Breaking a contract with someone outside China is not seen as a breach of the law but rather as smart business practice. It isn't something done inside the country so much but, if they can find a way of doing it elsewhere, this is the way it is done. They genuinely see no problem with it. It has been this way ever since China did business with the rest of the world. 

I am sure our new Foreign Minister is aware of this but she is not going to say it. Her argument will be that we need to do business with China - and we do. 

So relations will change perhaps - on the surface. Those here attempting to do business there will be relieved that things are back to "normal". In reality nothing much will have changed. The new government will have to tread carefully so as not to make matters any worse than they are now. Chinese officialdom will take instant advantage of any weakness.

Doing business with China is not easy - but it is a very big market.

 

Teaching men to knit

is not the same as teaching women. I am sorry if some of you think there are no differences between the sexes but I find there are. Perhaps it is what societal expectations have been reinforced in them or perhaps it is something else but there are differences.

I went to a sort of "knit-a-thon" yesterday. My good friend L... suggested it and offered to transport me in both directions. I thought about Covid19 issues and then I thought about masks and hand sanitiser. Then I about just getting out and doing something for the fun of it and to help others. When did I last do something like that? Another good friend W... was also going. I was in for this!

I have been out of course - although cautiously - and I have have enjoyed myself. I have also been out to help others - and so I should. This event looked likely to combine the two.  What is more it was in support of a group of people I feel strongly about - the "deaf-blind". I looked at L...'s invitation and I thought of the man I met briefly at the last Show. He had come with his friend and interpreter. His interpreter had asked if this man could actually "see" our knitting by touching it. Of course we let him and what we were making was signed to him using the alphabet of the deaf-blind. I remember asking if I could say something to him and, guessing, I managed to say hello and ask him if he thought what we were doing was good. I also remember that slightly longer than usual grip on my fingers as he responded, his delight that someone else had "spoken" to him in a way he understood. It was sheer guesswork and good luck that I had managed to tell him anything intelligible. Even now I wonder what he got out of a visit to the Show which is, for most people, an intense aural/visual experience. 

It was that as much as anything which made me decide this was an event well worth attending. It was too.

The event was run as a sort of competition - seeing who could knit the most squares from the wool available between 11am and 3pm. There was a short lunch break. There were other "events" during the day too. 

I am not a fast knitter.  There was no way I was going to knit more squares than anyone else. So, knowing there were going to be some new knitters there, I offered to help as well. I knew that would be as interesting - and it was. There were four male knitters there. Three were perfectly able to get on without help from me. The fourth male told me he had once tried in primary school - and that would have been more than twenty years before. His partner was also there and she was also a bit uncertain. I showed her how to cast on. Once that was done she could manage the knit stitch. The male and I then got together. He's an engineer by profession. That was useful to know. He had been watching me help his partner. He tried not too successfully to cast on. After four unsuccessful attempts we decided I would cast on his twenty stitches. After that he was much more confident. I think what worked was me explaining in great detail not only how the individual stitches are constructed but how they relate to each other. This seemed to suit his engineering brain.

"Got it!" he told me. Well, not quite but he was well on the way. I kept telling him, "Under, over, through and onto the other needle" for a bit. But yes, the relationship between the stitch on one row and the stitch on the row above and below is what he needed to know. He was thinking in single stitch units. It is the way I would expect my BIL to react and he is also an engineer. 

By the end of the afternoon's knitting he had done about eight rows. It didn't look much but it was really a lot. He had achieved a real skill. "I'm going to make sure I finish this square" he told me. 

It wasn't tidy but J... who will have the unenviable task of putting all those mismatched squares together told him, "And I will use it."

I came home with some of the yarn J....had wound off for people to knit their squares with and I will get a couple of people to help. They are very competent knitters. If I see the finished blanket though I will be looking for a square made by a newbie who used his engineering skills to understand the process.

Perhaps it was the engineering skills - but I often observe males doing things and I think they do approach things differently.

Is volunteering out of fashion

or can some of those who would be willing to volunteer really unable to do it?

There is a short article in this morning's paper saying that the rising price of petrol is causing some people to withdraw from volunteering. They can no longer afford the petrol which once allowed them to collect and deliver items like food and clothing or attend activities for vulnerable children.

I am fortunate in that my volunteering can be done from home or I can pedal to the venues concerned. I make time for these things even though there are times when I would much prefer to be doing something else. It's important to do those things.

I was genuinely shocked when our GP suggested I "don't bother" because I had to get up very early one morning. Rather than accept I was helping someone on the other side of the world prepare for their volunteer role she seemed to think that sort of thing didn't matter. It does matter - to me, to the person I was helping and to the people who were going to be helped.

I also know that the woman who manages the local charity shop often has difficulty filling the roster. B.... knows that I would help if I could but her attitude is, "Cat, I call on you for other things. I know you do other things. There are people out there who could give up a few hours but don't." Yes, it would be very difficult for me to commit to a regular time each week. Even now my life can be chaotic when there is an emergency somewhere in the world. I am trying to cut back on that because we are going to need other people to do what I do. This has nothing to do with me not wanting to do the work. It's because I won't be around for ever. 

There are a lot of other people who currently volunteer and they won't be around forever either. The state's annual "Show" will have two new people as Convenors because the rules of the organisation state that other people doing this unpaid job must retire at 75. It is going to be up to those of us who volunteer with them to show them the ropes. It wasn't easy finding people who could commit the amount of time required either. 

Maybe I am wrong but I think we need to teach people what volunteering is actually about. Our society would not run nearly as well as it does without the people who do volunteer. The largest social welfare organisation outside government depends almost entirely on volunteers, so do several more. Once it used to be a matter of simply turning up and saying, "I'd like to help." Now there are police checks (which have to be paid for) and compulsory training in "occupational health and safety" and all sorts of  other hurdles. Many people "can't be bothered" with all this. Others simply do not have the time, especially in households where both parents work. 

But if we have to start to pay people to fill the roles that volunteers have been filling it is going to be very expensive and not just in financial terms. The thing with volunteering is not just the job itself but the people who are doing the same job and the companionship they have to offer.  Our society is going to be much poorer when we lose all that - and we almost certainly will without a little more education about volunteering.

The rights of the British Monarch

are limited and seemingly lacking in any power.

The situation in Westminster was inevitably under discussion yesterday and somebody asked me, as the only person with any legal training in the room, "Can't the Queen just sack Johnson?"

The answer to that is  both "No" and "Yes". I know. It's confusing. I had to try and remember what Walter Bagehot had to say on the issue. Back in the late nineteenth century Bagehot wrote a book about the English Constitution and in that he stated the British Monarch did have rights but they were limited. 

The Monarch, he stated, has the right to be "consulted", "to encourage" and "to warn".  What does that mean?

In order to answer that we also need to look at something called "the Lascelles principles". They were only brought to play in the middle of the twentieth century. They gave the Monarch the right to refuse a request to dissolve parliament if one of three conditions was met.

The first of these was whether the parliament of the day was still "vital, viable, and capable of doing its job". The second was if a general election would be detrimental to the national economy. The third and perhaps the most interesting was if the monarch of the day could "rely on finding another prime minister who could govern for a reasonable period with a working majority in the House of Commons". 

When the UK government went for a short period to "fixed term" elections it was thought those principles no longer applied. Now that fixed term elections are no longer in place those principles are presumed to be applicable again.

So, where does that leave the Monarch? I think we go back to Bagehot. What he says would appear to be correct. It means the Monarch has both no power and ultimate power - and that is not the contradiction it would appear to be. 

British Prime Ministers traditionally meet with their Monarchs on a weekly basis. In the normal way the meetings take place at Buckingham Palace - the "office" if you like. What takes place in those meetings is supposed to remain largely private and confidential.  It would be a foolhardy Prime Minister indeed who breached that convention. It is what allows the Monarch to question and to give advice.

The present Queen Elizabeth is very, very well informed about the British Constitution. My Constitutional Law lecturer, the late Leslie Zines,  was no Monarchist but he once told us that she was one of the best constitutional lawyers he knew of. Her Majesty has acquired an enormous amount of knowledge over the years and she has used it. That is only right.

The Queen can seek advice herself of course. That is the role of the Privy Council. 

But could Her Majesty simply call in the Prime Minister and say, "You are sacked." No. There are past Prime Ministers she has not cared for in the least. Meetings with them were undoubtedly uncomfortable for both but she would not have sacked them. It is quite possible she would have hauled them into line with words of warning about their behaviour but she could not tell them "You're sacked". If Parliament was about to do something illegal or dangerous then the Prime Minister would be commanded to attend a meeting. He or she would be warned. The Monarch would already have consulted the Privy Council and the Prime Minister would be advised of the outcome of the Privy Council meeting. It would be a foolhardy Prime Minister who ignored that warning. If a Prime Minister attempted to do something following that it is very, very unlikely it would get up in Parliament. 

Despite the belief of many to the contrary Her Majesty had no role in the "Dismissal" here of the Whitlam government in 1975. The Governor-General has much the same powers as the Monarch and they were used to prevent an illegal act - governing without supply. Supply was being blocked in the Senate because Whitlam was proposing to borrow money in breach of the law at the time. Much is made of the way all this was done and the Governor-General was clearly out of his depth and the role of the High Court was brought into question. It gave the "republicans" ammunition too. In reality however Whitlam and his government were going to break the law and had to go. Our democratic system turned to a general election. If the people had wanted Whitlam to retain his position he could have been re-elected. 

The same  is true in the United Kingdom. Their Prime Minister will eventually have to face the electorate.It is the people who decide in the end. Perhaps it is that which really makes the Monarch powerful.

It has flooded again

and this is for the third time in twelve months.

Brother Cat actually lives high enough not to be inundated with water but the bridge he and his partner would normally travel over has all but disappeared. They are marooned. 

"It's fine Cat," he told me when he could finally get a call through, "We have enough food and we are just staying at home. I'll go and help if they need me when it is time to clear up."

He will probably be called on to do some repairs or organise a team to do repairs somewhere. It's the sort of thing he is good at.

There are quite a lot of other older people where he lives who can do that sort of thing. They chose to live in a semi-rural community knowing that they would need to be able to give each other that sort of support. 

Brother Cat has picked up many skills over the years. He has carpentry and metalworking skills. He can plan projects in an orderly manner, knows what needs to be brought in to complete something and more. He built an extension to one property years ago. He then converted another. This last move has seen him build a room which serves as his workshop and his partner's editing room. 

I have no doubt there are other people in the district who have done similar things. Downunderites have a reputation for this sort of thing. I have come across some amazing people who have built all manner of things here and in other parts of the world. 

There were the four young men who were given a choice by the magistrate almost forty years ago. They could go off to a very developing country overseas and help to build a hospital or they could go to a detention centre for four times the six months he proposed. It was a radical move. It sent shock waves through the system. They agreed to go and help build the hospital...and never came back. There were schools to be built, another hospital...and so it went on. The magistrate is dead. The "boys" have been back but they never stayed long. I don't know where they are now.

There were the "bikies" who left for a country devastated by an earthquake. I was worried almost sick by what they were planning. They were going to repair a hospital they told me. I told them they needed to take their own shelter, their own food, their own tools and more. That was fine. They were vaguely aware of that but they sought advice...and the small hospital got repaired. A few other buildings were made habitable before they ran out of holiday time. They did a similar thing several years later in another country but on the second occasion their bosses gave them extra leave and they stayed a little longer.

There have been other apparently equally "mad" and "crazy idiots" who have done such essential tasks over the years. Working like that doesn't suit everyone. Not everyone is prepared to accept the dangers and difficulties or the privations of such roles. It is not the "adventure" that many people believe. It isn't "fun". It can be very, very traumatic. It is very hard work.

There are things that could be done to mitigate flooding in the affected areas. The "Greens" may not like it but there is a need to be realistic and, properly handled, the end result will benefit the environment in which people need to live. In the meantime they will need to rely on those volunteers.

How to save money

according to the state newspaper.

There was the usual article this morning about interest rates rising again and how families are "doing it tough". Then there was a list of things people might be able to cut back on in order to find the extra money to cover the cost of the mortgage rate rise.

It was the last I read with some bewilderment. I know there are people who are "doing it tough". There are families where people really are struggling to pay the rent or (if they are lucky) the mortgage, pay the bills and feed the family. 

But this list? It started with Uber Eats for a family of four once a fortnight - don't do it and apparently you could save $2600. Well actually the local fish and chip shop has a deal where, if you pick it up, you can get a very good meal to feed four people - for around half that price.

The next item on the list was something called F45 membership. I had to look that one up. It is some sort of "fitness" club - cost $3380. It would be cheaper to buy a decent pair of trainer-shoes and go for a brisk walk with your partner. Of course it won't give you the same sort of "feel good" feeling and you might need to find other ways to do some of the weight lifting and the like. It could be done though and that would be a hefty saving.

Then there were movie tickets and snacks once a fortnight (presumably this is alternated with the Uber Eats) $2132. Alcohol to consume at home - $2064.  Buying lunch Monday to Friday - $3380. Pub dinners (schnitzel and a pint) once a week - $3640. Holiday for two for five nights in Thailand - $3157 (and  yes, before you ask, I know people who do this and leave their children with the grandparents). Then there was "early bird" parking in the CBD Monday to Friday for $4940 and the pedi-manicure and eyebrow wax and tint once a month at $1500.

There was only one other thing on the list and that was health insurance at around $2757 for six months for two.

I have health insurance. It would be irresponsible not to have health insurance - especially at my age. If I need treatment and get it a little more quickly I may actually save the government money in the long run. It is the only thing on that list that is essential for me to have. 

I don't have any desire to have the rest of the things on the list. I do have the very rare "takeaway" meal with family - almost always from the fish and chip shop because it is good value and good food.  I don't have to worry about alcohol - being allergic at least has the advantage of also saving money.  Anything else on the list is also a choice rather than a requirement. There is the rare "coffee" with Middle Cat or a friend. 

If other people choose to do those things that's fine with me. It is good even in that it helps to employ still more people. Some people do only one of those things, others more. But I wonder how many people do the things that were mentioned as often as that? How many people do those things without thinking? My BIL takes his own lunch. His office has a microwave oven for the six of them to use. They can all have something hot if they want it but he is the only one who uses it on a regular basis. One of the other staff will sometimes reheat the soup he has bought in it. I am afraid I am sufficiently parsimonious that I would, like my BIL, be using it on a much more regular basis.

But all this is what people choose to do. They have the right to choose too. Perhaps I really am a bit odd but I think I'd rather do these things less often and pay the rent more easily or pay off the mortgage more quickly.

 

Another mass shooting

in the United States and it isn't even appearing in my Twitter feed for some reason. Have we really become so inured to these events that they no longer have any meaning at all? 

That frightens me. When my goddaughter was young she was not permitted to watch the news. This wasn't a decision of her parents - although they concurred - it was a decision of the school she attended. It was a fee paying school with a lot of very wealthy families, the children of household names and more. Parents often appeared in news items and, until the girls reached the Senior school (at age eleven) the school asked that girls not be exposed to such news items on television. They were not isolated from the news but how it was presented was kept under control. 

I know there are arguments for and against this stance but I do wonder how children really perceive such appalling events. Does it seem real? I know children get upset, very upset, when their teachers talk about issues like climate change and other more controversial topics. It is apparently desirable to teach the young about some things but not others - and to make sure they only get taught the "correct" way of thinking about them.

Do we shield children from knowing that there has been another mass shooting in a country a long way from here? Or do we tell them and try to make them understand that this is the reason we try to limit gun ownership in this country? 

We aren't immune. There are those here who would do the same if they had access to similar weapons  and something happened to set them off on that destructive path. I know someone who worked in a bank. There was a hold up in the bank and a gun was pointed directly at her. A shot was fired in the same hold up - although not at her. She never went back to work there. To this day she cannot enter a bank or a post office - both places where a similar incident might occur. Her life has never been the same. 

We get "warned" about footage in the international news service I half watch. There is more than one reason to be doing something else while the news is being read. I have no desire to see the death and destruction which is all too common. For the most part I listen. If there are subtitles I might need to look up but, for the most part, I will guess at what is being said. (Those subtitles are often only an approximation anyway.) 

The Senior Cat ceased to deliberately watch or listen to the news in the last few years of his life. He felt there was nothing he could do any more and such things distressed him. He would see or hear things in passing and was still concerned but he chose not to dwell on such things. He knew I sometimes had (and still have) no choice because my job involves helping those who have some of the most difficult and challenging jobs on the planet. That doesn't mean I need to dwell on issues I can do nothing about. It does mean that I must do what I can.

I can do nothing about the latest mass shooting in another country but I can be concerned for those involved. Is that enough? I will worry for myself if it ever comes to the point where I say, "This is nothing to do with me."  It is always something to do with me.