An Unlucky Break...

If all had gone well this would probably have been my first blog post from London. I’d probably have been fighting a bit of jet lag but refreshed after the 22 hour flight and a shower and a nap I’d have been spending time wandering the streets of London and reminding myself of my good fortune to be back in one of my favourite cities.

If all had gone well…

Long story short, I’m in my flat in Ripponlea wincing with occasional pain and frustrated by being flat-bound thanks to a stupid, simple but apparently not uncommon ‘incident’ which has left me with a broken bone in my foot just below the little toe.

A simple tumble turns a three week trip to London into a six week enforced ‘rest’ at home.

Gee I wonder which I’d prefer to be doing?

Really, is YOUR life so hard?

Alright here we go, the list you’ve been waiting for:


TWENTY First world problems.

1. I took such a long shower this morning that the hot water ran out

2. I wanted one of those extra bacon burgers at Maccas but my local was out of them

3. My tram was too crowded, too hot and I couldn’t open the windows

4. I ate too much at lunch and now I’m really tired so I’m leaving work early

5. All the dishes in the dishwasher are dirty so I had to eat my toast off of a Tupperware lid

6. My computer is soooooo slow

7. The string on my tea bag fell into the water

8. I call my mum and I just go through to voicemail

9. The postie tried to deliver a parcel to home but I was at work so now I have to wait until Monday to collect it myself

10. Damn I’ve no memory left on my SD card

11. All the good tickets are sold to the U2 concert

12. There’s too much in the sandwiches from the shop next door so I never get to finish them

13. It’s only May and it’s freezing so I had to put the heater on last night

14. I have a queasy stomach but I can’t eat for fear of throwing up. The Panadol hasn’t helped either

15. I have to get up early and be dressed nicely when the plumber arrives in the morning

16. I keep forgetting my WiFi password my ATM PIN and my telecode for phone banking

17. Damn I broke a nail

18. Why can’t Channel Seven start shows at the time they advertise?

19. Petrol is up again this week

20. The water tastes funny in the tea room


Ah yes indeedy, off to make a coffee (hope there’s enough milk)….

Buy Now, Buy Today or Bye Bye Good Sense

I wonder when it all started that we turned into such suckers that we fall for almost every piece of marketing and herd thinking going around.


Let’s start with the basic over consumption, needing the latest gizmo epidemic we’ve attached ourselves to.

You only have to go for a walk around the neighbourhood to see the electronic equipment dumped on verges and nature strips (presumable waiting to rise to the skies in some sort of resurrection). Bulky TV sets, computer equipment, printers, stereos all come to rest on the grass. Am I the only one who wonders how many of them actually no longer work?

Put aside the gobsmacking dumb thinking of just plopping the equipment out on the verge because the owners are too bone lazy to take to the tip or to an eWaste collection point. The thing that concerns me is have we really turned into a society where we buy things now based on wanting to have the latest rather than need? Our parents and grandparents would be astounded to think that we would replace something before it conked out and fork out good, hard earned money (or worse stick it on the plastic) for something that is absolutely unnecessary except for our sense of worth.

So what of this sense of worth? We seem to feel something ‘less’ if we don’t have what ‘everyone’ else has, if our iPad can’t make coffee or our TV only broadcasts TV shows for heavens sake. And now a car is simply tres ordinaire if it doesn’t parallel park automatically – good grief. Our sense of worth is tied into a sense of belonging BUT that belonging is based on what we own and how well we can converse with each other about technology. And this is all about marketing and a deliberate cultural shift that has given us appliance envy.

So where does this lead us? If you can’t afford the latest or don’t have the sort of living quarters that accommodate an in home theatre how does it all impact on your sense of self worth, belonging to the tribe, in old terms ‘with it’?

The big items are bad enough but we have coffee machines that need ‘pods’ to whip up a coffee and those pods are environment vandals using coffee at a rate that means one pays per kg a price far outreaching a barrel of oil. Disposable razors that ‘tell us’ when they are blunt although how a piece of plastic can do that is beyond any scientific explanation. Printers which are poorly designed (they don’t need to be so bulky) use ink cartridges that cost a fortune to replace. Bottled water which is a simple redundancy in a country that has the healthiest and cheapest tap water in the world. Mobile Phones which cost $35 to produce and are sold ‘on a plan for free’ which in real terms means they cost you about $300. And then there are the telecommunications and computer equipment which is redundant the day it is sold because the companies making them will almost certainly be starting testing on the next model (which of course we MUST then buy).

It’s hideous and we keep falling for it and I simply do not where this came from and why.

How about going another step and thinking about where a lot of products are produced and how equitably the supply chain is distributed. It is a bitter irony that a person making a TV probably can’t afford to buy them, mainly because the price of a TV in, say, India or Bangladesh, sells for the same mark up as it does in the higher waged countries. We think it is attractive that other countries would want to be the same as ‘us’ and as well off as us but turn a blind eye to the exploitation of the workers and the inequities that produces. We use language of the slave traders (‘colored folk wouldn’t know what to do with wages’) or the generations who kept women down socially and economically (‘you start paying women the same as men and they’ll expect to run the company’). It is so easy to apply an argument from our comfortable perspective without consideration of the logical conclusion to them. I get the effect on the world economy if a factory worker in China making clothing was suddenly paid the same as a clothing working in Sydney but isn’t that just being fair if we do? Why is that person in China not worth the same as the one in Sydney? Why wasn’t a woman who canned fruit in Shepparton entitled to be paid the same as a man doing the same job at the same cannery in the 60’s? Why was a slave in America ploughing a field paid nothing when a white man working in a bank in Boston was?

And why were people in a Bangladesh factory making shirts for a British department store a week or so back not worth being safe from death in a fire?

The next time you pop on a nice shirt made in India, or switch on your flash TV while enjoying your movie star coffee, resting your feet on some fine furniture that replaced what was all working very well, take a moment to consider the circle of connection and the part you are playing in the way the world is today.

And wonder why it is like this.

When it all started.

Where it will all end.

And weep with me…

She's Gone But Never Forgotten

I adhere to the maxim never to speak ill of the dead. To this end I've refrained from saying anything about the passing of Baroness Thatcher. I thought some of the more celebratory reactions to her passing were unseemly, unkind and immature. I would imagine though that if you or your family had been directly affected by her politics then the scars would still be raw and the memories not at all happy ones. Time marches on though and hopefully many, if not most, of the people went on to have good lives in fulfilling jobs and were great parents, siblings and friends to those who mattered.

Some of my previous posts have talked about my feelings towards the divisive and cruel politics of the only female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

I have seen London in the Thatcher days and watched sadly over the years as that unravelled from great hope to enormous despair. It ended up being a vicious, cold hearted and nasty time. In 1979 (a year before my first visit to Britain), Hilda Margaret Thatcher quoted St Francis of Assisi, telling reporters and the nation: “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope”. Almost immediately she set off on a course which brought disharmony to many and took hope away from almost anyone who fell below the line of achievement she and her government deemed worth worrying about.

I watched in horror as the Docklands area was cleared to make way for Mammon sweeping away history and the poor who got in the way of progress. Many years later I actually like that area but the world and history is littered with perfectly pleasant, even spectacular places that are there at the expense of others. Visit Shanghai sometime and you’ll see what I mean.

While I admire the woman’s leadership and determination I despise her politics and the unflinching dedication to crushing so much that was good about the country. Her single-mindedness was breathtaking; you only have to reflect on the shocking Falklands War and her determination to produce not just a definitive result but a crushing victory to avenge British deaths. The Belgrano incident was an indictment on anyone who claimed to be a person of peace and who valued human life. In 74 days she ruled and commanded while just over 900 people died (that’s a better kill rate than most wars). The Lady may not have been for turning but her legacy is definitely one for mourning.

Is this the year?

When it gets to this time of the year people either indulge in pointless resolutions or try to dedicate themselves to something they truly believe in and will do their best to make it happen.

I've been reflecting a little bit on life and the world and I keep coming up with what I'm tired of and those things I'd simply like to see stop.

• I'm tired of being told one thing only to find out they meant to say the other. Why can't just be honest and open?
• I'm tired of the rich white guys taking advantage of people in 'developing' countries. Off shoring, partnering or whatever you like to call it is now the 21st Century version of the slave trade. Let's be honest here, companies don't choose these countries to move to because they do anything we couldn't learn to do. No we go there because it costs less and most of that cost is wages. I get the business imperative in that but I despair of the moral imperative. If I live in Bulgaria and put electronic components into a gizmo why should I be paid 25 euro a day there instead of 225 if I did it in Birmingham or Brisbane? The response is usually 'but their standard of living is so much lower'. Damn right, have you seen living conditions and social welfare, the medical and public transport systems in Eastern Europe, parts of Asia and Africa or India and Pakistan? Give me a break! 
• I'm tired of social injustice. The once favored dictators now the devil incarnate, the turning a blind eye to hideous practices because it's 'cultural'...bullsh*t, if it's wrong it's wrong 
• I'm tired of so many people living in poverty. It's a fact we all have the power to stop it continuing, what we lack is the will.
• I'm tired of hospital waiting lists and wards lying empty in this country. This is Australia, damn it. We are one of the richest countries on God's green earth and it is simply money and politics that accepts that a low income person with a painful hip might wait up to two years to have the operation. IT DOESN'T HAPPEN IN CUBA...
• I am tired of a military response still being the automatic reflex to conflict by America. Obama asked for the clenched fist to be open, he still clenches his. The conversation is overdue.
• I am tired of the negativity in politics and the bottom line, lowest common denomination politicians we have. 
• I am tired of being treated as invisible because I have passed a perceived use by date. 
• I am tired of bills getting higher and it's not because things are better, it's because management and infrastructure have been poor
• I'm tired of CEOs and their obscene bonuses
• I am tired of sexism in the media, especially advertising
• I am tired of 'women's' magazines and the banality of their content and the stupidity of those who purchase them - if you want to read untruths buy a novel and support the hundreds of authors and publishers who struggle for a living.
• I am tired of bad manners and discourtesy. I am over the disappearing excuse me and the ever widening yawn. I could scream and the 'doof doof' of too loud iPods, the raised voices on mobile phones and the drongos that cut in front of you on footpaths.
• I am tired of people confusing religious institutions with the actual faith.
• I am tired of atheists but I am also thankful because they usually give me a laugh.
• I am tired of young people bemoaning turning '30' and anyone who take birthdays for granted 'ah it's just another day'. This is the day you, from the millions of others who didn't,were born. It is an incredible event and an amazing privilege that it happened to YOU and to dismiss it or take it for granted is an outrage. You don't have to have a big party every year but goddammit you damned well better be grateful and humbled by the fact that it is your birthday.  
• I am tired of America's addiction to firearms
• I am tired of institutional racism, war, asylum debate, calling ourselves a white anglosaxon country are all based in racism
• I'm tired of being asked 'how's your day been so far?'
• I am tired of sadness
• I am tired of debt
• I am tired of getting old, not because I don't love the experiences I notch up and value the privilege of every extra day. It's the aches, the lack of sleep, the impatience, the memory loss, the confusion, the relevance deprivation, the patronising, the failing eyesight, the assumption that because I'm an older man I might be dodgy if I smile at a child and especially I'm tired of the tiredness

So there it is. Every day I wake up is a gift. I mostly love being alive at this time in history and I most of all just love being alive. But I just wish some of the stuff in the list above were different and it would be something akin to bliss.

I hope you do to.

Bah humbug...well not quite

'Twas the week after Christmas and all through my head not a bon bon was sounding, not even a sled...

Can I tell you why I really can't do Christmas anymore?

Firstly, I still love the meaning and spirit of the season. I think the idea of peace and goodwill to all is a profound and empowering one. I certainly believe it is appropriate and vital Christians remember the birth of Jesus. Sure it might jot be historically accurate to celebrate the 25th December as that day but no one seems to be able to offer an alternative with any certainty so I'm comfortable to acknowledge his birth on that day without feeling compelled to recognise it as the actual day. For heavens sake even the Queen's birthday holiday is not on her actual birthday so...

So what have I got against Christmas? No I'm not a Grinch, Scrooge or misery guts. It's just become too much and too removed from the meaning of the season for me to really want to be involved.

Here's the way I see it. We really now have a festival of presents, purchases, gluttony and guilt, tinged with or flavored by expectations, mostly realistic and nearly always painful. And to top it all off people who have no religion or faith based on the story of Jesus are clinging onto Christmas as though it is theirs to own and celebrate. Frankly the hypocrisy stuns me and then they'll even go off to a Carols service and sing away to God, the Angels and 'Oh Holy Night' - give me a break. And let's not start on taking a day off from work to commemorate the birth of the son of God! What's that about?

We consume huge amounts of food, because we have huge amounts of food served up to us and we waste huge amounts of food because we buy, grow, cook and/or put it in front of ourselves. What is it about Christmas that promotes gluttony and waste? Can I have the relevant passage in the Bible puhleassse?

Gifts become an obligation rather than a joy, with some even being 'equally apportioned' - if I give one kid $50 I have to give everyone $50. Frankly I have all I need, I don't need anymore gizmos, I'm not even sure I need the ones I have. My not smart phone does things I have no desire to use nor will my world fall apart if it I use none of it except the phone. In fact I would not be substantially affected if that stopped, there are phones at work, pay phones around and I have a landline. Oh and those payphones cost 40 or 50 cents a pop - don't think about the plan you are on and how much those 'free calls' you get actually cost. But hey that's probably too hard and we just can't be bothered anymore and it is all about 'now'. That must be why the phone or gizmo we buy today at some inflated price will be replaced within a year and we could buy the same model at a third of the price but n o we'll again be conned into paying full whack for our new one. 

What if I just say 'no more' to gifts, well look out for the guilt! How can I deprive friends or family from giving me a present? But am I certain the presents I get are heartfelt or given from a sense of obligation - because it's Christmas. I am grateful for the kindness of the gesture when I get a gift but why should anyone feel they have to give me something? This consumerism and festival of gift giving only really dove into madness since the second world war so it is not a 'tradition' by any means. I see ads on tele for a $500 barbecue or a $1200 TV system and I despair at the connection with Christmas apart from the gift giving. If I give a $10 gift card I immediately wonder if that is 'enough' and I wonder why...how is the price linked to the gesture? Is filling my cupboards with 'stuff' or being obliged to contribute to a Kris Kringle really adding to the sum of human experience and the goodwill to all?

No, not everything has to have a meaning and a purpose in life or always be for the betterment of humanity. BUT if one time ought - wouldn't it be Christmas?

So next year I and many others will again gorge at a table of excess, smile at people we really tire of really quickly, swap presents we really didn't 'need' to buy and stop to think about those who have a lot less and will continue to...and then it's off to bed children.

Random thoughtfuls

A few things to ponder:

• You are 15% more likely to die from gunshot wounds in America than any other country
• All States of the Union now allow concealed weapons to be carried
• Very few states have screening requirements for gun purchases
• No state has a waiting period for purchase of guns
• Licensing requirements (where they exist) are not standardised
• Hunting accounts for less than 6% of the population of the States
• Every day in America, guns claim 84 lives and wound nearly 200
• There is no constitutional right to buy submachine guns or silencers
• Australia has had NO mass killings since gun control laws were passed in the wake of the Port Arthur killings (1996)
• 'Guns don't kill, people do' is nonsensical. Guns sell in their hundreds of thousands, don't tell me it's so they'll just sit in a cupboard and look menacing - they are made to kill (and that would be the point Sherlock)!

This IS the day

Children shot and killed, others terrorised and cowed, a 20 year old man kills himself and it leaves us gasping with grief and incredulity.

I visited this subject all too recently after the murders in the Cinema showing 'The Dark Knight' so I will simply refer you back to there.

On Twitter I was called a 'slimy liberal' for a comment. Probably indicative of the difficulty for Americans to have a reasonable and mature discussion about the topic of gun control or just the level of debate social media is capable of.

I am hopeful that Obama with the shackles of first term Presidency off his hands might show the courage (although why it should take courage is a question onto itself) to say 'enough' and bring America into the 21st Century and ask why that great nation has to have most citizens armed when very few other countries survive without that 'need'. I do believe that Americans are wholly decent and moral people but the chink in the armour is this madness of owning a gun. And as I said in the other blog, no one else 'bearing arms' prevented this ghastly sadness happening in Newtown today. So what is the f**cking point? It is maddening and loony logic. And more and more it is becoming simply indecent.

Today has to be the day or at least the first of days.

And it has to be the last of the days, please dear God...I don't want to see another one of these moments of horror. It is NOT evil at work (that seems to me to be such a cop out), it is one sad person taking their moment in the limelight, acting out on some pathetic need whether as a result of mental illness or simple cruelty. And, you know what, it could NOT have happened in a society that had tight gun controls or believed in every citizens 'right to bear arms'.

I am so sorry for the families of these children,teachers and others who have died. To the classmates and surviving staff and parents of children spared, to the emergency teams and hospital staff, the journalists who cover the stories and to all of us left wondering why, our thoughts are with all of you...take a moment to reflect.

A Prank Goes Wrong

My thoughts have recently been with the family of Jacintha Saldanha the nurse who took her life after transferring the prank call from 2DayFM to the ward of Kate Middleton.

Up front I think the prank was a bit of larrikinism and I have no reason to believe there was any malice attached. It wasn't particularly well done nor was it really convincing. I do think the station management have tried to 'manage' the reaction rather than respond in a humane and decent manner. Unfortunately no matter what they do now they have lost the momentum and botched any hope of being seen in a decent light. The two presenters are two naughty adults who ought to have known better but who have been coached and spun so tightly they probably don't know which way to turn. Their inability to cogently answer some questions in their interviews this week was symptomatic of over engineering and protection from corporate nabobs.

That aside I have pondered why someone would kill themselves, not want to go on living over something as meaningless as the prank. Sure we can blame cultural differences (shame etc), we can speculate on what else was going on for Jacintha that led to her hanging herself or we can look at what might be happening to all of us. That's my concern.

I have felt for quite some time (and some of my previous blogs might reflect this so forgive my repetition) that more and more we are becoming less and less equipped to 'cope' and we have a propensity to attach ourselves to 'things'. We define ourselves by our relationships, by our jobs, our sexuality, iour salary, even by what we own or buy or for the love of Mike, wear. What is going on?

Somewhere along the way we have fallen into the idea that we no longer have worth for just the being we are, that joy doesn't come strongly enough in our individuality, that we always need to be approved of, be part of something, have 'followers' or 'friends' or only have value if we are acknowledged in the context of the general, the group, the ideal or the fashion of the day (clothing and trends). Heaven help us apparently if we are not of the favored demographic, race, religion (or non religious), don't have the latest gizmo (critically the latest), can speak the lingo of the moment or conform to the marketing industries current 'in' thing. This, I think, is what is bringing us down. How can we have a healthy self esteem if that is tagged to something that happens on a whim?

We need to take stock and remember that we are god-given beings who have the privilege of being here, now. Out of the millions upon millions of random (or specific) acts of nature, a whole heap of atoms conjoined at a particular, incredible time and we, each of us individually and as a population are here as a result. It could have been anyone else but it is US. That is amazing, that is one hugely profound idea.

We are NOT more or less worthwhile as a human because of who we choose to love, marry, cohabit with or feel hurt by. If a relationship ends it is often shitty but it ought not be a reason to end our lives, we are made to recover and the challenge - even the wonderful gift for us is to survive the pain and go on and prove we weren't destroyed by it. Reality check...it was just a relationship. Similarly if we lose the job we loved, or were bullied by some sad sick creature or physically attacked by a random nong...we are not the tragedy, we are human beings who can survive it all and go on to rub the universe's noses in the aching despair. We have to stop wanting to or choosing to be the event, the crisis, the emotion and stay being the person. It is hard and it requires re framing of our thinking but, it seems to me, we used to be able to do it. I believe we can again.

As a footnote, I have been a person who has sunk to despair and wanted to curl up in a ball and die. Indeed I have taken active steps to end my life once. I became what my thoughts told me, I was useless and unlovable and worthless. I did that to me, I chose to believe 'me'. So I know what those thoughts are like and I know it can be changed. We are who we are for lots of reasons and we can blame others and we can just stay stuck. Or we can change. Sometimes we don't have the power to change where our hurts or ideas came from but we always can choose where we go from today. We can still do it and we have to be okay about it because it makes us healthy and strong and it can stop us from ending the precious life we've been given.

Talk to your friends who hurt, hug your children and let them know they are precious, give the bullies no power - shrug them off, turn your fear of them into pity for them, love your job but be ok if it ends, nurture your relationship as much as those in it but if it ends, let it go and be okay about that.

I wish Jacintha could have gone on to know all this. And you know what? I wish I could have one day been in London and know that I could still walk past her, not even knowing it was her but that she was on her way home to her family and was feeling okay...about herself.

Be well and take care