Rather Cloudy and warm with a chance of Rain and Cyclone Oma.

Cyclone ‘Oma.’

Australia must be desperate for news when half the TV News-time is taken up by dire warnings of a hurricane bearing down on the East Australian Coast. Nothing is sure yet. A man with a small face wearing glasses is brought to the camera to explain the latest about this hurricane that has now been ‘bearing’ down for at least a week. Warnings about giant waves are interspersed with footage of surfers happily riding those big waves. Drone shots are shown of Gold Coast skyscrapers perilously close to the breaking waves. The BOM ( Bureau of Metereology)  man on TV tries to spin it as long as possible and now shows maps of large circles and a red centre. It shows New Caledonia on its right and the Australian coast on the left. Cyclone Oma is still 1200 kilometres from Australia but large waves have already arrived.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-22/cyclone-oma-weakens-to-stay-off-queensland-coast/10834820

We normally pay the weather little attention and know it roughly behaves as it does. Why it is part of the News is a mystery. I remember that in the past, farmers used to study the sky and figure out what the weather was likely to do. Even so, we too take some notice of the weather that is yet to come. The map on TV shows the name of towns and have either a sun, cloud or rain droplets displayed above them. The weatherman rattles off the future chances of wind, sun, rain or even snow and does it with an air of someone announcing the upcoming marriage of the Pope. One ABC weatherman has a curious way of lifting his left foot up on its heel while pivoting around back to his map. When he is finished he is curtly thanked by the News reader and that’s that.

I suppose with the impending tornado, nature is forcing us to become more attentive. A flood, a tsunami, blizzards or any other localized  apocalypse, the forecasters do get our attention more than the average weather forecast or news of a baby that is held upside down by its feet for alternative spinal manipulation.. The trouble when a tornado goes on too long, it wears us out and we slip away again. It is when a Prime minister arrives on the screen, wearing rubber boots and a face mask that we get to sit upright again. The TV screen shows us the wrinkled face of a farmer, hoisting by the help of his tractor, a cow’s carcass out of the mud.  Our PM, Mr Morrison, all puckered by concern mumbles a few inanities feigning concern but fully concentrated on future votes. I fear, with the resignation of M/s Bishop, chances of the party holding on to power has now slipped away altogether. However, don’t underestimate the anti refugee mob! The pot of hatred is being stirred again.

The weather is so much kinder, isn’t?

A solid foundation for bullying.

With a steady stream of  News on TV and newspapers about many forms of bullying inflicted on school students including the latest insights on’hazing parties’at our Sandstone and other prestigious universities one wonders where this stems from? While this might go on in other countries, I am not aware of it, and can only write about what happens here ‘today’ in our own neck of the woods.

http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/labor-tells-residential-colleges-to-clean-up-their-act/9494780

The Australian school systems, especially the more exclusive ‘Private school’s’ have a system whereby the school classes have captains, prefects or duxes appointed by the head master or mistress whose rules and penalties were the standards and to be obeyed without questioning or a recourse to a higher authority. The most likely reason for this is that many established rules of our societal norms have been inherited from the British. (Till this day our head of state is the English Queen). In schools cheating or letting down the other side is still considered more serious than failures of sensitivity. Stealing is still seen as the most serious failure.

In Australian schools, prowess at sport is extremely praiseworthy and excuses many breaches of rules and decorum. Bookishness and dislike for physical activities is disliked and even arouse suspicions of a certain moral darkness and even invites punishment or some form of disciplinary action for the slightest breach of the rules set by the school captains or prefects. A good rapping over the knuckles with a bamboo stick was the answer.

Hardiness is considered more important than sensitivity, let alone imagination. In boarding schools you get up at six, take a cold shower and run a mile before the classes assembled in uniformed solidarity. Woe those that had hidden a book under their pillow.

It isn’t’ just at schools that initiated the now well established nation-wide art of bullying. This was also the norm at many work places. After arrival in Australia I was amazed at the initiation practices imposed on young apprentices including myself, a cruel process of degrading the hapless victim, most times of a sexual nature, often overseen by the chortling foreman or factory manager. It was ‘the norm.’ A psychologist would rationalise and explain it by saying; ‘you give back what was given to you.’ This is at the very centre of what is now still so rampant in Australia. ‘We bully you to give back what we were given.’

It just doesn’t apply to schools or universities. Just look how our politicians behave, almost on a daily basis. And how does one explain the fact that refugees are now in their fifth year of deliberate and intentional detention on Nauru an Manus. While a small dribble of people have finally been allowed to settle in America, the majority are still stuck in endless limbo. A purer form of punishment and bullying would be hard to imagine.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-01/bullying-must-stop-pm-writes-to-schools-amid-university-hazing/9496150

Yet, our PM has now instructed his department to write to every headmaster to install programmes to alleviate bullying. But this is a hollow act, perhaps to make him look good and enhance his future election as a PM.  A better example would be to show kindness to the refugees still in detention. Admit that coming by boat to Australia escaping the mayhem of bombings in own countries is no crime.

Our PM would do better and do away with the overt British system of discipline and punishment above all else.

Show some kindness instead.

 

Is killing children now the norm?

One doesn’t have to go to Syria to witness killings. Wave after wave of high tech bombers drop their loads on targets which are known to house civilians. They do this with pin-point laser guided precision. Words now fail the UN and many other peace organisations in condemning the slaughter. Footage on the News show, with regular monotony, civilians running and carrying the dead or wounded over piles of rubble. One gets the impression that  running hither and dither is about the only activity still possible. After all, some victims are being carried out of hospitals that were not spared the slaughter either. Where does one run to? If the world’s empathy hasn’t stopped the slaughter of innocents where does one go?

Of course, we don’t have to visit Syria for the slaughter of innocents. The US is in an even worse predicament, and the only war involved is the one of their own making. The Florida school massacre is one of the many school shootings that occur with the regularity and predictability of a grandfather’s clock ticking away. We know that from statistics and past massacres that they will continue. Knowing that, could one  ask if the killing of innocents in the US including the killing of children is now deliberate? Not doing anything by changing the law on gun ownership it must be known that school massacres will happen again. At present it happens about once a week, and since 2013 there have been 300 school shootings. More guns have been bought since, so, more shootings will happen. Guns do shoot!

https://everytownresearch.org/school-shootings/

Australia too, had its massacre. The Port Arthur Massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australia)

was the turning point and a law was passed in 1996 whereby guns would be bought back from the general population by the Government. It was called the Gun Buy Back programme. It was hugely successful and crimes and murder involving guns dropped immediately. Every now and then a moratorium enables another period to continue buying back arms whereby guns that have entered Australia illegally can be bought up again. No questions asked. It is sensible and saves lives. The original change of law in Australia was established by a conservative Government.

What happened after the gun buy back was introduced in Australia?

From Wikipedia.

“Australian independence didn’t end. Tyranny didn’t come. Australians still hunted and explored and big-wave surfed to their hearts’ content. Their economy didn’t crash; Invaders never arrived. Violence, in many forms, went down across the country, not up. Somehow, lawmakers on either side of the gun debate managed to get along and legislate.”

The latest from the US;

D. Trump while listening to a delegation of students from different schools, suggested he is willing to look at arming teachers and have trained guards patrolling the schools. He is knowingly advocating that more school children will get killed! He must know that.

There was a snippet of hope when reading that one man who was very pro gun, deciding he had enough of the killings and publicly cut his gun in three pieces. It is now going viral on the internet. It is a start!

Let’s hope he will be followed by millions more. Is there finally a change in the air?

Renewables, Wars, and Same Sex Marriage.

Indeed

Isn’t it amazing that no matter what the science is telling us, there will be people denying the truth that coal fired power is now as outdated as the horse and buggy were in earlier days? The Australian government is beholden to some that just will not budge and will stick to the past, forcing up the cost of energy. They do this with the fervour of an 1810 Leicestershire luddite destroying anything and everything progressive or forward looking in their paths.

Just read this latest from ABC News; http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-25/the-truth-about-soaring-power-prices/8979860

We live in a townhouse sharing a joint roof but are considering going the whole hog and install solar panels with the Tesla battery back-up. The cost of doing that will go down as time passes. My guess is that with power bills reaching stratospheric heights there will be a tsunami of home-owners doing the same. It just doesn’t make any sense not to do this. The energy companies are shunning coal power stations like the plague and no one wants to invest nor spend money on maintaining the old ones except our Government staunchly defending anything that doesn’t move forward.

With a keener more forward Government the renewable technology could be hurried along by local shires to install complete off-grid power stations on vacant land that Australia has so much of, and bring affordable cheap energy to those in units or apartment blocks without roof space for solar panelling.

The transition period between the old and new technology could have been made   easier and economically more efficient if we were not burdened by the Neanderthal fogeys in our present Government. Where do they come from and who puts them there?

It is the same with this referendums on SSM. Some of the same parliamentarians taking great delight in venting their hate and torture on refugees are now venting their rage on those who want the chance for love to stand a chance, and pass laws making choice of marriage equal to all, no matter what orientation. They twist and turn to try and prevent the law from becoming kinder and more just towards those who might be different.

Some of those same Parliamentarians take great pride in the bombing of foreign countries where we have no right to be involved in, and do so without asking permission from its citizens by holding referendums or postal polls. Billions of dollars spend on keeping a few thousands refugees in jail, billions on fighting in stupid wars, and now even more billions in propping up old coal powered technology. Were any of us asked our opinion or approval to do so?

So why the idiocy of holding referendums on SSM in the first place? Is SSM more dangerous than fighting wars or holding refugees in jails. Sorry, to be meandering so long about this SSM subject but rest assured I am just as keen to write about much more positive stuff. I suppose the return of Germany’s Angela Merkel is something to celebrate but…, the extreme right has also done well which is not so positive.

Was our previous PM Paul Keating right, when he predicted Australia could end up a ‘Banana Republic? I need a good carpet bowling session at the local RSL club.

 

A normal day with a solid ‘like.’

Has anyone had a normal day lately? It seems to me that we are forever being whipped up by news. Yet, newspapers are going broke. When is the last time you bought a newspaper? I find it almost impossible to get to the news. My computer’s home page offers a constant stream of fake News. The latest ‘News’ offering was the promise of pictures of the Australian woman being held in Colombia’s Bogota jail accused of cocaine smuggling. It promised to be  pictures of her living in that jail. However, when I clicked on the item the only news-item shown were advertisements for shoes and perfume. You see,  the photo is just a lure to entice one buying things.  I suppose, if one persists the promised pictures might eventually appear. But by then I had lost interest.

We watch the National Broadcaster (ABC) for news. Even there, one has to trawl through a constant stream of advertisements before arriving at the news. The SBS channel is still watchable but only just and mainly because it does give you a wider range of international news and above all,  much less cricket and football. So, in summing up; with all the electronic instant-ness about everything, true news is lacking. Commerce has taken over news and perhaps it was always thus.

There is CNN, The Guardian and a few others where one can find some reliable news. It is getting harder though. There are wild allegations that Putin is throwing the spanner amongst countries’ elections for new heads of state. Hackers are stealing megabytes and distributing millions of e-mails everywhere. I too sometimes get mysterious e-mails that don’t make sense. Some that are putting ‘likes’ on my blog turn out to be selling something, or worse, allure to dalliances of which I am not keen. I have heard sad stories of  people getting involved in IT romantics that cost  them their live savings.  A while ago an experienced and savvy bank manager was interviewed on TV. A sad story unfolded whereby he got caught being fleeced by a Nigerian scam on the internet.  He thought it was true love. He told his story as a warning to others.

I very much doubt though that nerdy looking Russian hackers will ever feverishly go over my blog or trawl through my e-mails. No one seems to want to capitalise or exploit me. It makes one think of the insignificance of it all. I don’t even get the chance in saying; “I am deeply humbled by this occasion.” It seems to be the latest most popular answer from people in the lime-light or from those on a stage clutching a trophy or an award.

I was astonished to be offered a batch of three hundred ‘likes’ for a mere $490.-US. That’s right. One can buy blog ‘likes’ now the same as butter or a herring. A while ago, I read a post by someone I knew some years ago. He was always a bit Hollywood and very fond of driving around in expensive  cars with personalized car number plates. He planned a new job by charging people to help improve their ‘status.’  He set up a web-site and asked shamelessly for possible readers to put a ‘like’ on his web-site. He hoped this would help setting up the business.

I do appreciate likes on my own blog but I am pretty sure they are mainly genuine.  I would not remotely consider asking for a ‘like’. I know that people give ‘likes’ and hope for a return ‘like’ on own blogs. Perhaps, we should have a ‘dislike’ symbol as well. It is all so flimsy and silly. Even so, it would be less than honest to admit that I don’t enjoy getting a nice solid ‘like’.

It does perk one up during the day after all the fake ‘news.’