Category: Towards a better way of life

Using my Voice

David Pocock was a great rugby player and I admire his impetus and integrity as a Senator. He recently called on Rugby Australia and all sporting bodies to support the call for a Voice in Australia.

I take exception to that – to me it’s like telling all sportspeople they must take a knee.

Consequently, I read the Uluru Statement from the Heart*. I regret that I was disappointed but not surprised.

I accept this document represents the views and beliefs of many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and that these various indigenous peoples were the sovereign rulers of Australasia at the time of European colonisaion.

Sovereignty relates to power. So, prior to colonisation, the indigenous people had the power over the land. They certainly were not united as one people and battles were common ** and it is assumed sovereignty over land changed over time – that is the explicit nature of mankind.

Colonisation is an economic force and those who are technologically superior will prevail, by seduction or force or both. The colonised are suppressed until over time they are assimilated or rise up and overthrow the colonists. That is the history of mankind.

The Uluru statement infers that longevity of possession confers eternal sovereignty over the land and states that the indigenous people “must one day return thither and be united with …. ancestors”.

It is remarkable to note the religosity that surrounds this concept of custody and ownership of the land – it has permeated Australian social values and is pronounced at every major public spectacle. A remarkable public relations coup!

Attachment to the land and access to the graves of ancestors is not just an Aboriginal thing – but they have made it iconic.

It cannot be disputed that Aboriginals have proportionally higher representation amongst the incarcerated and that children are alienated from their families at unprecedented rates. There are protestations that “we are not innately criminal” which suggests that while there may be evidence they committed crimes or abuse, they should somehow be exonerated as the victims of rapacious colonists.

Whatever and wherever, there is a strong case for effective and cohesive actions to be taken to facilitate opportunities to escape the spiral of ignorance, indulgence, poverty and crime.

However, the guilt scars left by the treatment of the stolen generation are strongly etched in the Australian psyche and the Voice is possibly seen as a simple way to ease that guilt. Virtue signalling is very fashionable at the moment…

The statement talks of possession of the land i.e. ownership … does that not suggest that ultimately there must be compensation for historical dispossession at today’s values?

It seems that the Voice is saying: Show me the money…!

In the US, some local governments are contemplating compensating present day African Americans for the hardships of slavery.  The Canadian government will pay A$3billion in compensation to hundreds of Indigenous communities for decades of abuse suffered by First Nations, Métis and Inuit children in residential schools. The Maori in New Zealand have wrung millions from the Crown in recent years, which is an enticing precedent.

In the African sub-continent of my birth, there is a great push by Nguni tribes for return or recompense for land they once possessed for a while, and they are not even of First Nations aristocracy, just recent tenants!

Let us be clear on what is being sought:“substantive constitutional change and structural reform….to empower our people…... a Makaratta Commission to supervise a process of agreement making between governments and First Nations”

This is needed to end “the torment of our powerlessness“

The indigenous people are seeking more power than that which they share with non-indigenous Australians.

This is a classic manifestation of Woke thinking: generate guilt and moral wrong by highlighting historical inequalities and injustices and impute the blame on the current electorate and demanding rectification by reconstructing society and its institutions.

This is a modern application of democracy based only on sentiment.

Looked at objectively, granting more power to Indigenous people will only differentiate them more and cost more, with no guarantee of upliftment.

Beneficial action to uplift segements of society does not require constitutional amendment it requires clarity of purpose, consultation and adherence to a course of action.

Before you vote in the referendum, think carefully about the implications and why you are doing it.

Is it just to show you are sorry or do you believe it is right to give more power (money) to a differentiated sector of the population, based on that difference?

And who will be next? L G B T Q I … ?

*Uluru Statement from the Heart referendumcouncil.org.au/sites/default/files/2017-05/Uluru_Statement_From_The_Heart_0.PDF

** https://international-review.icrc.org/articles/indigenous-australian-laws-of-war-914

Thoughts at Easter

The long Easter weekend was often a lonely one for me as a young man when I lived in Rhodesia, a country at war. My friends were either on call up for military duties or visiting their families; my family was too far away for a long weekend.

So, I often pondered the meaning of life, god and my own trajectory, making myself melancholy by listening to Kristofferson’s “Sunday morning coming down”

Now I listen to old, sad Easter hymns on Good Friday and Handel’s Messiah on Easter Sunday. I am still moved by the memories and emotions of old beliefs.

My mind seems to be stimulated by the four quiet days of the long weekend – in fact it is in a whirl, tormented by the mess the world seems to be in.

We are in need of a Messiah in our world today, or several Messiahs….

Peter Turchin is a complexity scientist who works in the field of historical social science that he and his colleagues call Cliodynamics. 

He has done extensive analysis of historical societal collapses and writes:

…. data indicated that we were well along the road to political disintegration. The structural factors undermining social stability in past societies—popular immiseration, elite overproduction, and state fragility—were all trending in negative directions in the early twenty first century America.*

I would extend his analysis to the the whole western world, at least, if not the whole world. We do not need another world war in less than a century since the last one…. or do we? Maybe we deserve the pain and horrors of holocausts and brutality in order to get our world straight?

Back to what I see as a global mess: Russia /Ukraine, China, Africa in general, some of the South Americas, the whole of the Middle East, all in the grip of corrupt autocrats who have little regard for the worth of individuals other than themselves. (Dare I add the US to that list?)

The bickering over climate and the lack of common environmental purpose. The iconoclasm of the Woke erosion of free expression and re-ordering of morality, the inertia of the worlds’ middle orders, the universal reverence of mammon.

The total disintegration of morality apparent in the Trump phenomenon can not and is not being denied. A huge number of US citizens are rallying around a man being pilloried for lying about paying off women with whom he committed adultery. He denies the adultery … so why did he pay them? Duhh!

Mind you it seems that almost as many US Presidents were philanderers as were not!

But it is so serious, the very fabric of politics in that country is being tattered. Couple it with the whole Woke wave demanding and receiving remuneration for injustices perpetrated on long dead people by long dead people – history is going to become expensive. That is state fragility and popular immiseration.

Elite over-production describes the condition of a society which is producing too many potential elite-members relative to its ability to absorb them into the power structure. This means too many people with too much education accompanied by higher expectations than can be accommodated.

Just look at the issues with student loans in welfare societies – it is too easy to get a degree on borrowed money. Attempts to cut off that flow is a suicidal political move which will generate radical reaction from the most volatile segment of the demographic. Collecting the debt is risky enough for government!

A Marxist would probably call this bourgeois overproduction; these days we would call them wannabe elites.

That encapsulates the root illness of modern western democracies: too much entitlement and not enough individual responsibility – anything is ok if it is NIMBY (not in my back yard).

It takes catstrophic societal upheaval to get citizens to recalibrate their expectations.

Well, looks like we may be headed there…

*https://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/an-intermediate-retrospective-on-ages-of-discord/

Rectitude

I suppose it’s the first 4 letters which generate in my mind a sort of carrot up the arse, stiff upper lip, holier than thou image .

I think maybe it was a desirable trait in the days of Queen Victoria, when it denoted a moral, conservative stance. Nowadays, it is a trait of the progressives who are awake to any opportunity to denounce.

It is also the armour of the petty bureaucrat, who will follow the letter of the law despite great injustice being the consequence. e.g.:your visa renewal is refused because you paid the wrong fee; you must quit your job and leave the country.

These thoughts have been kindled by a recent article on Celebrity Slavery*:

The fashionable pursuit of reparations from celebrities, who might shell out rather than run the risk of ‘cancellation’ and humiliation, smacks of extortion. 

Certainly the latter suggests a commercial morality: a skeleton of a rich man’s ancestors is far more valuable and attracts greater media attention.

Much easier to apply leverage to an individual than governments of former colonies where there are many of the estimated 40 million people still in slavery.

Researching rectitude, I came across this graphic of virtues:

They seem pretty wet to me, grounded as I am in the more traditional cardinal virtues of prudence, fortitude , justice and temperance.

Be careful, be brave, be fair and moderate in all that you do.

If you practise those virtues you don’t need to be woke, righteous, progressive or vociferous.

*Article by Peter Kurti, The Spectator, 21 January 2023,

My new windmill

Remember Don Quixote who charged a windmill as he believed it was an evil giant?

I identify with the old gentleman. I too am a bit bewildered by the modern world: hasty but easily confused, I take umbrage swiftly when faced with blind zealots cloaked in do-good deeds.

The new windmill we all must face is an evil giant, so big, we cannot see all of it – I beg you to believe this.

You will need great courage to defeat it because it is well entrenched and has many powerful and erudite supporters who believe that they are right.

I feel like someone in Nazi Germany in the 1930’s when the politcal system was perverted and Storm troopers set the moral tone, burning books and bullying, looting, then eventually exterminating Jews, Gypsies, Communists, the insane and mentally handicapped en masse: their own people. The silent majority let it happen then – will you let it happen now?

We have a greater threat than Storm troopers facing us now. We have a culture of do-gooders, armoured in virtue so as to be apparently unassailable. They are taking our values and history and perverting them, persuading us to join the lynch mobs to do the job.

No Church nor brave politician has yet been strong enough to withstand these insidious forces who quell dissent with floods of populist rage, causing timid buraucrats to act according to the mob’s demands to suppress, notwithstanding their own codes and commitments to freedoms and fairness.

Their rationale is that all must enjoy equal freedoms in today’s society and recompense for their struggles of the past. Redress must be instantaneous on mere request. Only victims’ views and claims are considered. It is disrepectful to oppose these views.

This You Tube video on the transgender phenomenon clearly manifests one of the workings of this evil modern day windmill – it horrified and enraged me. If you are not similarly affected, go away and revel in your ostrich ways!

Teachers and doctors and administrators and politicians permit practices because they cannot stand up to unsubstantiated claims, they go with the flow. The media who trumpet the virtue signals which mask the atrocious demands are the agitators who see profit in the flames of chaos in society.

We have a moral obligation to “stay woke,” take a stand and be active; challenging threats in our communities, protecting freedoms from erosion by allegation and mob support.

Ask your MP, school principal, class teacher, doctor the following questions:

  • do you believe that gender is a choice and has nothing to do with biology
  • are kids who haven’t even gone through puberty capable of making the decision to change their sex
  • should children under 18 be permitted abortions, puberty blockers and hormonal treatments without court order or parental permission

If the answer is yes, make sure everyone knows that fact.

Now is the time for them to nail their colours to the mast and take sides. Post the questions on websites, ask their associations what their positions are and publish their answers, silence or evasions.

Get the answers now before they are passed into law because there is no opposition. We are fighting for our values and our children.

Speak now or forever hold your peace!

The debate over the referendum to grant a “Voice” to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia sparks many thoughts in my mind, most of them cynical. 

Now I don’t have a vote in Australia, but I have paid taxes here for nigh on 10 years so should have one; thus I figured I am entitled to speak my mind.

My first thought is that these people do have a voice and representation by their own elected representatives. (Does this mean that democracy has failed them?)

My second thought is that the concept of a “Voice” for this poor benighted sector of the population is quite a funky meme-ish idea, likely to appeal to the shortspanofattention current generation. It is a crisp, simple virtuous PR vehicle, ideal for politicians.

My third thought is that the referendum is likely to be quite divisive, because of the modern propensity to factionise and label for easy meme-ing. The ‘aye-sayers‘ are inclusive, woke progressives and the ‘nay- sayers‘ are racist Tories.

Wait, it gets even more … rough-edged?

There are about 500 different Aboriginal tribes in Australia, each with their own language and territory and usually made up of a large number of separate clans. more than 250 languages and about 800 dialectal varieties

Which language will be used by the Voice? And will all agree on the words that are spoken? In New Zealand, there are still big money debates going on about the meaning of the Te Reo Maori version of the  Treaty of Waitangi, thought to be clearly written in English.

The Indigenous population in Australia declined to a low of 74,000 in 1933 from an estimated 314 000 when the First Fleet arrived. About 12 000 were killed by colonists, the rest likely succumbed to the ravages of disease and by products of western civilization such as alcohol and despair.

A Voice will give 3.2% of the population additional power in Parliament – a 25%  increase in that population since last census! It seems that aboriginal heritage is gaining flavour.

This portion of the population is the most poorly educated, unhealthy, socially destitute and criminal of all Australians. It is also diverse and disparate. It has a history of subjugation and some abuse, some of which may have been well meaning by the perpetrators but devastating for the victims.

Can we expect clarity, foresight and community interest from the speakers of the Voice? Will they be united  and informed and representative of their electorate? Is that likely? Or will there be Boards and Committees and advisors and bureaucrats to give the Voice a neck and a head…? Lots and lots of money…!

It’s not a new political trick. In 1967 a referendum relating to Indigenous Australians, was called by the Liberal-Country Party Holt Government. Voters were asked whether to give the Federal Government the power to make special laws for Indigenous Australians.

Acts of Parliament have appointed Protectors of Aborigines and Aboriginal Protection Boards in the past, with little apparent success.

The persuasion for this campaign is founded on the wave of Woke thinking which is sweeping the old, democratic Western societies, which recently saw off ScoMo and the LNP.

The fact that the Aboriginal population suffers significantly less advantage in society is regarded as a consequence of a racist hegemony, enriched by its historical suppression and racism: massacres, dispossessions and stolen generations.

The guilty must now pay a penance which will (maybe) absolve them of this horrible taint of the past and make everything okay …. yeah, right!

My last thought is related to my antipathy to Woke-ism, which you may have detected. 

Once the benighted Aboriginals have a Voice, will we not be bound by precedent to enshrine more power for the exclusive use of women, then the homosexuals, lesbians, transexuals, pansexuals, one knee cappers and sheep lovers, etcetera?

I will leave the allocation of body parts to a new age biologist!

While I am here I was wondering why there is no rainbow flag in Parliament and why no-one took a knee at the opening of that august body, soon to be given a new voice.

Bureaucratic humanity and pragmatism

Are  bureaucrats humane and pragmatic? One would hope so.

Assuming they are, it follows that they must have regard for the impact of their decisions. 

Last year a long term resident had his application for renewal of his residence visa refused, because his original visa granted in 2014 had expired when he submitted his renewal application.

He had applied in time in 2019, but that application was found to be invalid because the wrong fee had been paid.

The correct fee was paid in July 2019, but by the time the application was submitted in August, the fees had been increased. Government applications require proof of payment before submission of applications. 

In a matter of days, the application was declared invalid as there was a fee shortfall of $25. The applicant was advised by the department to re-apply with evidence of full payment, which was done, but by the time the new application was received, the original visa time period had elapsed by one or two days.

The applicant was also advised that he could no longer work as he had no valid visa and he had to resign.

After a week he was granted a bridging visa pending the consideration of his subsequent (late) visa application. Fortunately he was re-employed by his employer.

After 15 months, he was advised in 2021 that his application was refused as it had been made in Australia, when he had no valid visa.

He has lodged  an appeal against that decision and his bridging visa has been extended.

This appeal will be heard in anywhere between 15 and 30 months.

The applicant is a family man, who has held full employment as a manager since his arrival in 2014. 

The man loves Australia; he is a sportsman and lover of the outdoors; he wants to buy a house and raise his family here. He has no criminal record or history of bankruptcy; his partner is a top level educationist. His qualifications have already been scrutinised when he first applied in London in 2014.

The prolonged torture of having one’s career and family future hanging by a thread for 3 to 4 years is agonising for him and his family.

Why can’t bureaucrats look beyond such petty transgressions which can be so easily fixed? Presumably when appeals are lodged the relevant decisions are internally reviewed. 

Does this mean this type of petty bureaucracy is condoned and thus encouraged in government ministries?

Where is the benefit for Australia?

Politicians would not survive scrutiny of such petty acts.

 Just a thought – If these processes were digitised, turnaround would be almost instantaneous. 

Even systems can be taught compassion and common sense.

Memory is not what I thought it was

“Many people believe that memory works like a recording device. Memory works a little bit more like a Wikipedia page: you can go in there and change it, but so can other people”

So says Elizabeth Loftus an American cognitive psychologist and expert on human memory*. And she walks her talk with an impressive array of research.

She was consulted by Harvey Weinstein who asked her: ‘How can something that seems so consensual be turned into something so wrong?’ 

Memories are reconstructions; they are not literal representations of what actually happened … (memory) is highly malleable and open to suggestion.

She has also shown that false memories can be embedded by leading questions and psychotherapy.

In a 2013 TED talk entirled “How reliable is your memory” she reported that one project had identified some 300 people who were convicted of things they didn’t do, based on DNA analysis. Three quarters of the cases were due to faulty eyewitness memory.

The implications for eyewitness based testimony and the validity of repressed memories are huge. It means that single witness evidence should not be regarded as sufficient evidence of truth, unless there is other direct evidence to support it.

In the US, some states refuse to prosecute cases based on recovered memory testimony and some insurers decline cover to therapists on recoved memory malpractice suits.*

Testimony from Professor Lucas in the two headline inquiries in Australia into rapes by a Minister or in a Minister’s office may well be enlightening.

But sadly, the outcomes of those inquiries have already been decided, without the need to hear evidence.

In my view, the sooner we get rid of juries, eyewitness evidence and judges the better: we need to promote universal surveillance, compulsory truth serums and lie detection and use a computer to evaluate the evidence.

*Wikipedia – Elizabeth Loftus

What about undersea sustainable cities?

Story suggested by Bob a.k.a. Tinker Connolly Monday 15 March

The continent of Atlantis was an island
Which lay before the great flood
In the area we now call the Atlantic Ocean
So great an area of land, that from her western shores
Those beautiful sailors journeyed
To the South and the North Americas with ease
In their ships with painted sails…

Hail Atlantis! Way down below the ocean
Where I wanna be, she may be…

or

Under the sea
Under the sea
Darling it’s better
Down where it’s wetter
Take it from me

It seems crazy to be talking about settling Mars when there is so much space under the sea.

In modern times, it was probably the intrepid underwater pioneer Cousteau and his Conshelf research habitat built under water in the 70’s that sparked interest in the possibility of living underwater.

 Under sea habitation could alleviate over-population problems, or guard against the possibility of natural or man-made disasters that render land-based human life impossible.

Skylab has clearly demonstrated that it is possibleto survive for long periods out of the atmosphere. The difference with underwater is increased pressure as opposed to no pressure.

The pressures at any deeper than 1,000ft (300m), would require very thick walls and excessive periods of decompression for those returning to the surface, but there is plenty of sea bed above that level.

Energy can be generated harnessing wave action or placing solar panels on the surface.

The air composition needed to sustain the aquanauts depends upon the depth of the habitat. Current habitats use compressors to constantly push fresh air from the surface down tubes to the habitat. Growing plants using natural or artificial light could be used to generate a fresh supply of oxygen, or other methods could be developed to produce oxygen.

There are hotels which have underwater modules.

Water can be created using condensation or desalinisation. Depending upon the size of the colony, human waste could be treated and released into the environment.

Homes with undersea modules have been developed

A number of ideas and proposals are under consideration and undersea mining and marine fish farms are significantly large industries.

The sea is being recognised as an opportunity for expansion. Let us hope we can clean up pollution before we start living there. And keep it clean. And minimise our impact on a different eco-system….

Any bets we can do that? Thought not.

The drowning of rational debate

(This is a shortened version of an article by Chris Kenny which I endorse. I am somewhat guilty of irresponsible utterances and hereby undertake to try to be better)

Twitter digitises and broadcasts the public debate equivalent of a teenage graffiti and vandalism rampage. And yet it shapes debate; our mainstream media and politicians look to the digital world for instant opinion polling and guidance about where to take their narratives and policies …

It is amplifying and weaponising the crudest and most inane elements of society and inviting them to dumb down our public square.

Our battered and impoverished public debate will not improve unless we learn to talk to each other. For a civil society to exist and political debate to be useful, people need to be able to hear ­alternative arguments, avail themselves of all relevant facts, and learn to deal politely with people who do not agree with them.

Far too many people waste their time shouting digital abuse at each other, or regurgitating views they agree with from accounts chosen by the faceless match­makers of the Facebook algorithms, instead of reading, discussing or learning.

The digital revolution was going to democratise the media, personalise democracy and mobilise the truth, but instead it has polarised and emaciated the media, dragged politics into the mire of anonymous bullying, and fostered deceptive memes, fake news and pile-ons.

At its core is a lack of accountability. The enticement of being able to post widely and often about anything — without submitting to editors, curators, lawyers or peers — encourages bravado and aggression, and it fosters an impetuousness that ­values gut feelings over facts, and devalues the time and effort required to get across the facts.

This freedom could liberate debate; but instead of letting a thousand flowers bloom, it shares the scrawls of a thousand dunny doors. People are unthinking enough about what they post without the added shield of anonymity — requiring people to post under their real names, with proof of identity, would not eradicate the problems but it would improve the situation.

The headline or the topic is enough for these people to slur or condemn; often egged on by hysterical opinion leaders such as Kevin Rudd …

…. thanks to social media; more conservatives are forced underground. … social media has weaponised the assault against anyone right of centre.

The woke love the following and adulation of social media …. until they cross a line, make the mistake of speaking sense or asking a salient question, then they experience the rule of the leftist lynch mob.

Public debate becomes coarser, more out of touch from the mainstream, and less tolerant of differing points of view. Soon the stage is vacated by all but the screaming green left, and those who will appease them.

Chris Kenny Weekend Australian 13 March 2021 

Rational debate drowning in the social media swamp

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/rational-debate-killed-in-the-sewer-of-social-media/news-story/bd066d99571f6d35b67d95ae1c494b4a

life without the fruit of the vine

Story suggested by Christina Forsyth Thompson 6 Mar Sat

This is  a topic very close to my heart at the moment as I have given up alcohol for Lent.

Fortunately, by tradition, I follow the Lent rules applied by my father. As he was a Papal knight he  is unimpeachable as a guide.

The rules are no alcohol on every day of Lent which of course excludes Sundays and other Holy days, such as family birthdays. It being Sunday and my brother’s 80th birthday, I am drinking a beer as I write this, and I shall have another!

Giving up for Lent is not as hard as it sounds as it is a choice and a virtuous one too, so glory can be claimed.

Also, apparently there are a number of benefits attached to not drinking, according to some articles I read after Googling “life without wine”. 

A recent article by an Australian (she must be reliable) on stopping drinking  alcohol contained the following testimonies:

  • the depression and violent outbursts which had haunted me for decades gradually ebbed away
  • Pleased to discover it was easy, I felt a lot better, and I was more productive and positive.
  •  The first thing I noticed a few weeks in is how happy I felt all the time. Just content and relaxed.

and my favourite … I’m a rural Irish single person who hasn’t had a drink for about fifteen years, and I must admit that it’s led to me having a very solitary life, but I’m almost never in trouble, and I used to always be. 

and one with a ring of truth: I used to have a booze-free month every year. I stopped doing it because I had to accept that those months were invariably the most joyless, miserable, depressing, empty months of the year.

All I can say is beware of fake news.

Any student of history will tell you that Prohibition by law is just stoopid; people hate being told what they can’t do, especially if they have been doing it for a long time.

Surely the Prohibition era in the US,  less than 100 years ago,clearly  showed that such a move is very bad for a country. It lost the US federal government a total of $11 billion in tax revenue, while costing over $300 million to enforce. 

The law that was meant to stop people drinking instead turned  many of them into experts on how to make it.

The growth of the illegal liquor trade under Prohibition made criminals of millions and exponentially accelerated organised crime. 

So the folly of an outright ban on the sale of alcohol is monumental.

Maybe they did learn about the effect of prohibition…?

The crass stupidity of politicians who do this in the light of history is obvious. But you can’t tell pollies they are stoopid. They know that, but as we all know there is no cure for stoopidity.

I am sorry, I can’t go on with this and avoid allegations of being indelicate, unprogressive, intolerant and rednecked. They are all true.

But it irks not being able to say what I think … or drink if I want to.