getting the middle over inertia – Page 2

Why Do People Avoid Thinking About Serious Stuff?

… look away now if you’re not up for it

Not everyone does a lot of contemplation … when asked to elaborate … they are forced to parrot whatever echo chamber to which they subscribe. I blame the schools, all of them.

We are a culture of people who would rather be distracted than confront real issues, and we shy away from acknowledging problems because if we actually notice them we’d have to work to fix them.

My dream is that we find a way to incorporate critical thinking into the education system. Not only would we encounter people capable of having an intelligent conversation, we’d be more likely to hold politicians, business people, and everyone else accountable for their decisions and what they advocate. Imagine a return to fact-based decision making!

If the success of religions since the dawn of civilizations taught us anything, it is that most people are terrible at thinking independently and would much rather be told what to believe, think and do.

Most people don’t talk about deep stuff because they are shallow. They are shallow because they were never challenged properly as children to develop their critical thinking faculties. Children are constantly told to shut up and listen or else. Hence followers are manufactured in the home.

It’s a cycle that won’t be broken until someone brings forth a functioning model that provides working methods for existing damaged people to inadvertently not damage their children.

Once you’re raised to follow, you can’t listen to the truth because it forces you to violate your dependency on others which is now hardwired into your brain for survival. Hence the prevalence of dominance hierarchies.

These are responses on Reddit to the title question, not my words, although they resonate with me

How red is my neck?

The Altemeyer RWA scale measures right wing authoritarianism. I was curious so did the test. Now write down what you think I scored.

(22 is minimum and 198 is max).

I will tell you my score at the end of the blog.

Is compromise good or bad?

In a long ago industrial relations training session I was mildly scorned as I maintained compromise should be the realistic and most pragmatic outcome. Society in South Africa at the time generally endured an authoritarian regime and was engaged in a national power struggle .

Compromise seems to have an undesirable reputation and various negative meanings and circumstances attach to it. But in the context of bargaining I still firmly believe it is a better solution than total victory, unless the relationship is broken beyond repair.

That is because each party gets something, admittedly not what was desired but enough. If one can widen scope from total victory to partial victory then a solution is possible.

Of course, the degree of antagonism means that compromise solutions are difficult.

But that is what must prevail in Ukraine and Gaza as the degree of antagonism is reduced by the grief and loss felt by both warring countries. Sadly the latter seems to be spiralling out of control as fringe participants step up their antagonisms.

Both these regions existed for centuries in relative harmonies before borders became so darkly drawn on maps.

My RWA score was 33! Even I was surprised!

You can’t say that!

At a friend’s baby’s first birthday (can you believe it?) last week, I saw an Irish friend, who recently returned from a visit to the Emerald Isle. I puffed out my cheeks and chirped that it seemed he had brought some potatoes back with him. He laughed and said he had put away a few while he was there.

Another friend sitting next to me was aghast and berated me for making such a remark about someone’s appearance. I protested that he was a friend and wouldn’t take offence, to which he laughingly agreed.

Earlier in the month, I had been castigated by one of my daughters for calling a nephew chubby.

Should we not say what we think ? And why do others feel they need to spring to defend, calling out possible offence?

Much of the current erosion of western values has arisen from the failure to speak out for fear of treading on some sensitivity or other and causing offence.

So when a few people promote the right of people to choose their own gender and pronoun and demand that the rest of society follow suit, much of society followed suit, without demur.
When a few students muzzled the Oxford Union, professors obliged.
When mobs toppled or defaced statues of historical figures, little action was taken.
When immigrants heckled soldiers’ funerals, little was done.
When immigrant priests urged defiance and eradication of Jews and supported jihad, governments demurred….
When foreigners started flooding borders and consuming benefits funded by citizens’ taxes, governments tip toed and hesitated.

Yet, I shouldn’t tell someone he is looking fat!

Resentment festers and if unresolved can erupt. The recent violence n the UK seems to me a clear demonstration of resentment. It is going to take a lot of undoing, because the damage is a cultural wound and those cannot be fixed by decree. Once you have let people in the gate, it is very difficult to get them out and the process involves bloody mauling.

So defy sensitivity and correctness and speak out or you will forever have to hold your tongue.

It is not just a right, it is a duty.

Roolz are trapz

There are two types of rules: laws and regulations. Apparently, regulations are made to give clarity and certainty about the intentions expressed in policy or laws.

They do so by restricting and binding and diminishing freedoms. The more regulations there are, the less freedom there is, and the greater the risk of breaking the regulations. This gives legitimate causes for disputes.

Regulations are actually the tools of those that aim to reduce the power of the policy makers and the subjects of rules. They are the weapons of the trade unionist and the bureaucrat, used to consolidate and entrench their own function.

Policymakers are elected, like ministers, members of parliament, directors and board members. They do not make regulations. They delegate these functions to bureaucrats, who are not elected.

This is the likely source for one of the major failings of democracy.

By avoiding making regulations, policymakers abrogate any responsibility for how policies are implemeted, whether they succeed or fail, facilitate or oppress.

Politicians delegate their decision-making powers, instead of educating functionaries on the full purpose of policy and allowing precedent to serve as example.

Bureaucrats then lay out specific regulations describing specific behaviours required by the law makers and procedures to be followed to demonstrate this.

Procedures are the great scimitar of the bureaucrat.

In order to ensure greater certainty more rules and procedures are devised, requiring more bureaucrats to administer and interpret compliance.

Failure to comply with required procedure becomes a substantive offence attracting penalties: refusal or denial of a claim made under the policy. This is where the plethora of claims fail: improper procedure.

Actually, nothing to do with the intention of the policy !

Hence the existence of Administrative Tribunals, designed to deal with appeals against bureaucratic acts. The waiting period for an appeal is apparently only 46 weeks: easily long enough for memory loss.

The moral of this story: do not make rules, just make policies which are easy to understand and act upon. Let common sense rule.

Transform bureaucracy to save democracy!

We may need a Trump card to Musk it!

It does not seem impossible to imagine AI replacing most bureaucrats in the near future: imagine instantaneous decision making , information and assistance!!

Shine a light on it

This is not a religious rant.

The Devil loves the dark. He shies away from the light.

I was having a devil of a time understanding why I felt that capitalism was a failed system.

My concern was prompted by the perpetual focus on how rich the super rich are. The worth of Elon Musk, Bill Gates etc is staggering! According to Wikipedia they are surpassed by Bernard Arnaut who is worth $233 billion!! (understandable as he produces the world’s best champagne, brandy and luxury goods – Louis Vuitton – he sells to rich folk).

Then I shone a little light on their worth: LVMH has 213,000 employees, representing 190 different nationalities; Musk companies employ over 110,000 people.

That’s how capitalism works: clever people employ many people who in turn fund society and of course they all pay taxes so we can have a government to run our countries. In 2023, LVMH paid a tax rate of 26% on revenue of €86 billion.

That looks like capitalism works very well for society!!

Since the adoption of capitalism the world has improved dramatically:

Life expectancy has more than doubled since 1900;
the almost universal illiteracy of 200 years ago has practically disappeared;
only 10% of the world live in extreme poverty, compared to 80% of the world 2 00 years ago.

There certainly seems to be enough money provided by the Capitalist economies and even the former communist and totalitarian economies like China and Russia who have ample funds to spend on military hardware and war!

So we must shine our light elsewhere.

The US federal government debt now stands at 33 trillion dollars*

Almost every single Western economy shows a similar pattern!!

Throughout democratic capitalist economies, politicians are confronted by rising expectations of the voters, rising costs of government and declining productivity.

… authoritarian capitalist economies such as those of Russia and China are not constrained by the economic realities that confront Western democracies.

If free market capitalist economies are to survive we have to either substantially increase rates of taxation to pay for rearmament or reduce the welfare benefits that citizens now see as their right.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/06/are-we-doomed Tony Letford

Put that in your pipe and smoke it! Our governments are just shelling out money to stay in power – how long is that going to work?

So my faith in capitalism is restored. I have no faith in politicians, yet they are what we have, so we must get them to work properly.

Is it just the generation gap?

I have been restless and uncomfortable, resisting the inclination to froth and rant.

It’s not time to make a change

Just relax, take it easy

You’re still young, that’s your fault

There’s so much you have to know

The sheer perversity, fickleness and senselessness of mankind is depressing; I am aghast at the polarisation of people of the western civilisation; let alone people of the Middle East and Far East who are apparently equally as dichotomised and dissatisfied.

How can I try to explain?

When I do he turns away again

It’s always been the same

Same old story

From the moment I could talk

I was ordered to listen, now there’s a way

And I know that I have to go away

I know I have to go

Is it all down to tribalism? That great big melting cup of mixed ethnicities and cultures which is the supposedly United States of America, seems to be disintegrating politically and socially at an alarming rate. Economically it appears to be thriving but with an economy funded by huge and growing debt.

We have become diffuse and directionless, without a Polestar to guide us towards the same destination with the same interests.

Our ethics and principles and freedoms have been eroded and clouded and remoulded into different things to accommodate diversity, equity and inclusion. The authorities of the past are decried and history is re-defined.

I was once like you are now

And I know that it’s not easy

To be calm when you’ve found

Something going on

But take your time, think a lot

Think of everything you’ve got

For you will still be here tomorrow

But your dreams may not

Academia has been seized by the new wave, persuaded or cowed by the volume of cries to change history to abide by the new future of glorification and recompense of minorities. Disempowerment and emasculation are the cries of the new age, change is their agenda. There is momentum but little coherent vision – no Nirvana or Jerusalem, just destruction.

The old Marxists must be rejoicing at this projection towards a state of chaos, from which a new world can be built. Of course it will require a tyrant to bind the movement together and enforce discipline.

All the times that I’ve cried

Keeping all the things I knew inside

It’s hard, but it’s harder to ignore it

If they were right I’d agree

But it’s them they know, not me

So how do we avert this disaster? Or do we just roll over and go with the flow, as many have done already?

If, or more likely, when Trump comes to power, there will be a radical ripple of change. Support for NATO and the Ukraine and Israel will shrivel. Trade with China will be tariffed and short shrift given to illegal immigrants. The impact on Europe will be huge and Russia will grow powerful and dangerous to its other neighbours. China may be emboldened to consume Taiwan.

Will it stop the erosion of our institutions and society? Should it? Some of them are certainly no longer fit for purpose.

Somehow the gap between the polarised needs to be bridged. Zero sum arguments of the left and right will not prevail. A new way forward is needed.

That must be the solution: the best of the old and the best of the new, best of the west and best of the east, which we might yet have to discover.

Communication is now instantaneous, nothing remains hidden, accurate information and the total wisdom of the past is all there. Sadly, I fear, like religion, we have to deal with Man who is capable of and prone to corruption and perversion, to serve his own narrow interests.

Somehow we need to distil and renew freedoms which allow the truth to prevail and prevent corruption. Are we back to God vs Satan?

First define what is good and then what is bad; or vice versa?

Then get everyone to agree ….. Yeah, right!

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

DYLAN THOMAS

Other verses from Father and Son by Cat Stevens/Yusuf

Making ourselves mad

In order to allow both parents to enter paid employment, governments subsidise child care services, in which we willingly enrol our children, some as young as 3 months old. (This is permitted!)

As people get older, they need more care, so instead of caring for them, we allow them to be sent to aged care homes, also subsidised by government.

Out of sight, out of mind?

I bet this will surprise you …. NOT!

Over 50% of aged care residents have significant levels of depression.
Around one in seven Australians take antidepressants

Institutional old age and child care services are convenience services designed to remove caring support roles from the family unit and free up more people to enter the labour force.

The distress and toll on families that this causes is apparent.

In primitive societies, the elderly and the young were kept in the family home, with the bulk of caring falling on female household members. Oooh! I need to tread carefully here…

In modern times, females have demanded and been granted greater access to and equality in the labour force. Which governements support and encourage for a number of reasons.

So the modern solution is to outsource our caring duties. Is there any wonder that so many are on anti-depressants?

What can be a greater source for despair than daily abandonment of children and the marooning of their grandparents, our own parents?

We know the effect on the elderly – what about the effect on our children?

One solution is to stop chasing the ‘own home dream’ and promoting the shared home. Subsidise home carers, not care homes; incentivise one working parent households.

A 24-work day would enable both parents to work and to care for the children and grandparents.

The pace and demands of our society is causing its disintegration at the edges.

We institutionalise the young and old, almost certainly deteriorating their mental health. We allow the drug addicts, destitute and depressed detritus of our commumities to sleep in the streets.

Is it not time we open our eyes and put our foot down?

Xenophobia

“Never talk to strangers” was an admonition for young children. It was intended as a caution to be wary of the unknown; a portmanteau of the plethora of advice/warnings a parent gives: don’t take lollies from a stranger, don’t go anywhere with a stranger, don’t get in a stranger’s car…..

Seems to be still good advice. Take care with the unknown.

When a stranger wanders into our housing estate, warnings and photos are posted on community websites. I usually go out and ask if I can help.

My intention is primarily to help, but also to confront, to say I have seen you, so if you intend mischief, know you are being watched…

Europe, the US, Australia and South Africa are magnets for strangers who pour into their perceived rich territories, fleeing their less comfortable homelands.

The generation which has been taught that diversity and inclusion are holy duties and moral imperatives, faces political turmoil and dilemma as their homeland is flooded by alien peoples who have nothing and need support.

Suddenly refugees receive more support than pensioners, hospital access is clogged, crime rates increase with increasing unemployment. Welfare and employment of native citizens is vastly diminished…

In London, the last census reports a minority of white British people in 22 out of 33 boroughs …

In the Midlands of UK, churches are rapidly being converted to mosques.

The US Presidency will likely be decided by who will keep the most refugees out of the country. Many European countries are seeing political swings to the right because of the lack of political xenophobia.

In South Africa massacres of foreign migrants have to be prevented just 25 years after the end of apartheid. If you are white, you are unlikely to get a job, unless you have an extra special skill or a connection or start your own business., which must have a majority of black employees!

Of course taxpayers object if much of their taxes is spent on people who steal into a country.

Legitimate migrants have to jump through bureaucratic hoops and offer skills and money to be accepted. And God help you if you make a mistake!!

Refugee peasants just need to sneak in by boat and have a better chance of support from the government agencies.

So how can refugees be refused without offending the compelling Social Responsibilty imperatives which now dominate our corporate and political policies? How can we ignore the years of applying affirmative action and employment equity …?

I say we must protect our community by ensuring people who enter can support us and contribute positively and not be a drain on our resources.

Discriminate fairly: scrutinise strangers, ask where are you from, why are you here, what can you offer? before you invite them to stay.

Send the boats back – don’t let them in.

Soft, warm fuzzy attitudes and the inability to say no will ruin your country!

Crying out loud

It’s getting to the point where I am no fun anymore

I am sorry

Sometimes it hurts so badly I must cry out loud

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes: Crosby Stills Nash & Young

Some time ago, I started collecting quotes and expressions of many different people which resonated with me.

I thought I would share some of them.

There is a lot of stuff to process, take it easy – if you try to swallow it in one lump, indigestion is certain!

The state of our world

“In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion- and even nation-centred cultures, partly to decrease the danger of group conflict. But we are increasingly falling prey to the desperation of meaninglessness, and that is no improvement at all.”
Jordan B. Peterson

For now, just think about how we seem to have the most cowardly, corporatist, incompetent and self-serving ruling elites of any of our lifetimes. And weep.

The core issue is that changing political mores have established the systematic promotion of the unqualified and sidelining of the competent.

James Allan, Spectator

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.
William Butler Yeats

a country perhaps deserves what it tolerates.…

‘There must be no privilege of origin.’

Bob Hawke 30 November 1988

in the world of Woke, or the modern Maoism, the individual must bow to the will of the collective, as determined by the cultural elites. This is a complete perversion of democracy.

In this ‘brave new world’, the media are now our censors. The collective will crush you. Universities are intellectual gulags. Leftwing ideology is our persecutor and our inquisitor. Language has become our jailer, where say the wrong thing and you are branded ‘hateful’, and cast out.
Rowan Dean, Spectator

Welcome to country

It is a story presented to Australians as though we are being granted a privilege to be here despite all of us being equal citizens.

Why is there any special treatment based upon heritage (instead of need)? Why are the majority made to feel as if they are aliens in their homeland?
The re-write of Australia: straight out of the Marxist-Leninist handbook
Bryan Phillips

Aboriginal leader and activist university professor Marcia Langton, declared that if the Voice referendum failed there would be no more Welcomes to Country. (She) clearly sees Welcome to Country as a privilege to be bestowed upon grateful trespassers on her people’s land. She would, presumably, be appalled to know that a great many Australians now want to take her at her word, and be left alone.
Terry Barnes, SPECTATOR 20 January 2024

Identity Politics

‘the spiritual consolation provided by the dogmatic assertion of their collective identity’.

‘In effect, identity politics has come to serve as a substitute for religion – or at least for the feeling of self-righteousness that is so commonly confused with religion.’

‘the prevailing cultural-left orthodoxy is one where mind control and group think are enforced… Opinion thus becomes a function of racial or ethnic identity, of gender or sexual preference. Self-selected minority “spokespersons” enforce this conformity by ostracising those who stray from the party line – black people, for instance, who think white.’
Christopher Latsch, 1996

Whether climate alarmism, radical gender and sexuality theory, the evils of Western Civilisation, or society being guilty of white supremacism and misogyny – the battle lines are drawn and any who disagree are vilified, attacked, and in extreme cases cancelled.

Kevin Donnelly The Spectator Jan 2024 with quotes from Christopher Latsch written 28 years ago!

What we need to do

Most of this advice comes from Jordan Peterson who articulates clearly much of what I feel and believe.

Peterson is the man who said no.
Peterson upsets academia. Their determination to ‘shut him up’ has little to do with arguments about free speech and everything to do with the fragility of left-wing dogma.

(He) is not the sort of person you can throw a censorial spear at and hope he’ll stay on the ground, bleeding out in a puddle of self-pity. (What an accolade, in my eyes!)

‘Free speech is the mechanism by which we keep our society functioning,’

Peterson was someone tired of the wheel cycling human idiocy back on itself, caked in the muck of failed sadistic empires.

To him, (heckling students) are examples of history’s useless idiots cheering on the iron fist in the mistaken hope it will only smash their ideological opposition.

If there is one lesson to take from the aching bookshelves of humanity, it’s that we learn every lesson the hard way and then promptly forget those lessons.

If facts are hateful, science becomes shackled to political correctness …

A generation of academics have their thoughts held to ransom by an invisible framework of political offence.

As for Australia …Our system of liberty is based on … the goodwill of politicians.

Alexandra Marshall, Flat White January 2024

Quotes to think about

our obligation is to the action, and never to its fruits.

Do not be motivated by the fruit of your actions.

But do not become attached to non-action either.

Extract from Bhagavad Gita

Fear of consequences cannot be a justification for inaction. Duty toward the preservation of the moral order is far more important.

“You’re going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don’t do. You don’t get to choose to not pay a price. You get to choose which poison you’re going to take. That’s it.”

“When you have something to say, silence is a lie.”

“If you are not willing to be a fool, you can’t become a master.”

“In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.”

Jordan B. Peterson

The Janus Perspective

As the god of transitions and dualities, Janus is portrayed with two faces—one facing the past, and one facing the future. He also holds a key in his right hand, which symbolizes his protection of doors, gates, thresholds, and other separations or openings between spatial boundaries.

That is where we are – in transition. At least I desperately hope so!

At last the Western world, which I identify with as the best civilisation in this age, has awoken to the threat within its walls.

The erosion of identity politics, uncontrolled borders and hordes of refugees from alien cultures, the surplus of elites, declining educational standards, scant academic rigour and the dearth of strong politicial leadership has hollowed western democracies.

In 376 AD, a large migration of Goths and other non-Roman people, fleeing from the Huns, entered the Empire. Roman forces were unable to exterminate, expel or subjugate them… The Roman elites were beset by squabbling and in-fighting and the Roman Empire disintegrated.

Western polities are in the throes of an identity crisis which has enfeebled them, allowing more primitive, authoritarian cultures to infiltrate our institutions and values. Internal attacks on history, convention, institutions have been endured to their detriment.

We’ve been redefining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatised
Senator DP Moynihan, c.1994, quoted by Tom Switzer, Weekend Australian 30 Dec 2023

The moral outrage displayed under the Black Lives Matter banner fuelled the looting, toppling of statues, burning of cars and widespread defiance and confrontation of police. The cause was the death in police custody of George Floyd, a drug using criminal.

Such was the righteousness of this outrage that Democrat Senators took a knee as did many sportspeople, virtue signalling their acceptance of guilt for somehow being the cause of the failure of a huge majority of black people to succeed in modern society.

A number of state governments began considering paying reparations for slavery 100’s of years ago, at the expense of current taxpayers.

This challenge to society occurred during the period that the #metoo phenomenon strengthened the cancel culture which had stifled freedom of speech in universities.

Over the last decade, the West has been inundated by floods of refugees from the Middle East and Africa. Many of these people have not been absorbed into society and are living informally in squalid conditions, contributing to huge welfare demands and a rise in violent crime.

The decades-long lenient immigration rules in the UK have resulted in a huge influx of Sout East Asians and Africans. Such is this impact that many churches in the UK have been transformed into mosques and Muslim radicals protest at military funerals. Curry and rice long surpassed fish and chips as the favourite food choice.

Decolonisation is a rallying cry of the progressive left, but it no longer means the freeing of former colonies, it means racialising and disparaging the historical legacy of Western civilization.
Frank Furedi, Weekend Australian 30 Dec 2023

2023 saw a swing to the right, with the election of right wing governments committed to crackdowns on migrants and stricter border controls. In Australia the rejection of the Voice referendum, knocked back a flimsy political virtue signal aimed at empowering Aboriginals by according them extra constitutional power.

There are clear indications that there is a strongly building conservative resistance against the ideology of multiculturalism and the rewriting of history from the viewpoint of non Europeans.

What a swing of the pendulum to the right will require is for the hitherto generally silent middle mass of the population to bestir itself and defy the attacks on freedom of speech and the the right to police public order.

It will require resolute, courageous leaders determined to hold a firm stance and withstand media pressure.

The incursion of identity politics into everyday business and social life must be resisted and diminished. The rights of parents to be informed and make decisions for their minor children must be unequivocally upheld.

It will entail the rolling back of recent liberties like illegal behaviour during demonstrations, the tolerance by governing bodies of bigotry and hate speech and increasing surveillance of society.

The hard edge of this civilizational conflict is in the proxy wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Ukraine stands against the invasion by personal direction of a ruthless, totalitarian dictator. Israel stands against those that attack its people and seek its annihilation. It is a bastion of Western democracy, surrounded by autocratic regimes probably directed by Iran.

Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China are autocratic regimes, superpowers that seek to subdue the influence of the Western world. They have a number of alliances and huge and extreme military arsenals. They operate clandestinely, funding cyber attacks and external terror groups while shaking their nuclear swords.

Israel opposes and counters Iran’s influence and confronts its proxies, Hamas, Hizbollah and the Houthis, with assistance from Western allies. Russia is assisted by Iran, China and South Korea in its war with Ukraine, who is backed by the West.

So the choice is coming closer and it is serious.

Who do you support?

The rewriters of history and seekers of reparations for slavery;

The defenders of invasions of their country and of the western constitutional democratic freedoms.

It’s just not cricket

Usman Khawaja is a nice guy. However, saying his shoe statement is not political is naive at least or cynical or worse. The way the whole thing played out in a typical woke episode.

A public figure, paid to represent his country, departs from the uniform to endorse a statement on his shoe written in the colours of a political entity.

That is a political action, like taking the knee or black power saluting during the national anthem.

Quite correctly, this act was prohibited.

The fact that he was allowed to wear a black armband is a weak, unacceptable, woke compromise.

In Khawaja’s context it is an individual political statement. It is clearly not a mark of respect, worn to honour the death of a family member or a universal icon, relevant to the sport.

The fact the the team administration and captain allowed the armband is how woke works and it is a failure in principle and integrity.

Where does the rot start? Right at the top – this is what Anika Wells the Federal Sports Minister said:

“As the federal sports minister, I have always advocated for athletes to have the right to have a voice and to speak up on matters that are important to them,”

I agree with that, so long as they don’t use their workplaces. They are employed as athletes to perform their skills before a paying public. They need to keep their personal, political lives separate.

The making of political statements can cause tension amongst cricket followers of diverse views. Usman acknowledges his intended ‘statement’ attracted abuse. The Minister and Pat Cummins and many others clearly support it.

What if the team members were required to wear LBGTI rainbow emblems on their shirts?

What if a sportsman chose to wear a black armband on 30 April – the day of Hitler’s death? Or 6 August .. the Hiroshima bomb anniversary or … you get the picture.

Use of the public platform to promote personal causes should be prohibited and sanctioned.

Keep politics out of sport.

And have the courage to stand up to impropriety.