A long time between drinks

It’s been a long time between drinks – to speak metaphorically. 

On every front the nation we knew is under attack – not from some foreign invader, but the anti-bodies within that seem to be misreading the health of the nation and crying wolf.

One of my right leaning friends asked the other day what it is about our current leader that raises my hackles so – it made me think. There are a myriad of one off irritants that bite at my ankles.  Words have become entities of their own with no connection to my reality. There is a basic belief in politics that if you say something often enough it will become true. There is no future vision, no leadership, no original thought, no learning…need I go on.

 I feel like I am in a Dr Who episode where the human disguised space aliens are gradually eating me away while trying to tell me it is for my own  good.  

There is  a pervading atmosphere of toxic negativity bought about by the constant message that the economy is in trouble, we expect too much, we are under attack from invading Indonesian boats, that unions are evil – every part of our national fabric is being unravelled to re-knit the pullover into a good ole 1956 model.

And as a result probity, humanity, ethics and morality- if they ever existed within the hallowed Capital Hill walls - seem to be leaving the sinking ship. 

Look at the rhetoric:

Stop the boats

The whole catchcry focuses on the fear of being overrun by people who are ‘illegally’ arriving. Even Operation Sovereign Borders reeks of invasion. Occasionally there is a hint that this measure is to save drowning at sea, but essentially it includes no reference to the fact that desperate people, made more desperate often by our well intentioned interference in their county’s dilemmas (for right or wrong) need somewhere to be safe. Clearly  the death of Reza Barati on Manus Island should send a message to the human side of politicians that something is wrong with the policy – something absolutely wrong!

Governments don’t create jobs, business does.

Well, clearly that’s unfounded – who does the business bidding of government if not those people who are employed in their departments and who are all too dispensable when things do not go as politicians wish.

We don’t speak on matters of national security.

Clearly the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection should have headed his own advice before misleading the Australian parliament and people in regard to the Manus Island tragedy.

And in the meantime Transfield picks up an enhanced  contract for work on the island (no tender required); Craven and Donnelly score the Australian Curriculum Review (no tender required) and a myriad of other cronies fall in to line to head up reviews of unions, pink batts, and the next bright retro idea the PM lands on. Oh- that will be wages, conditions, welfare, health, education……………………. (add other areas here!)

What is all this for?

Budget surplus – the economic god factor.

And how does that work?

1.       Minister asks department to identify their costs for the coming 12 months

2.       Department provides costs

3.       Treasury halves the request

4.       Minister gets 2/3 of ½ of the original request

5.       Department allocated funds and expected to do all work identified in original request

6.       Minister requests 20 more things to be done to fulfil mad, ad hoc election promises (eg give every engaged couple $250)

7.       Department told to fulfil request ‘within budget’

Last night I watched Q&A. Apart from the ludicrous inference  from the Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development that young people could successfully negotiate individual working conditions on an equal footing with employers, there was some sunshine. 

 Clive Palmer’s response to the question of a young man about what more could governments do to address the problem of depression and mental ill health:

Paint a positive picture of future.

I hear cardinal Pell is moving to the Vatican to manage the budget. With his background and proclivity Tony would make a perfect right hand man. 

But, no. I recall being told that when Tony wanted to study for the priesthood he was rejected because the Catholic Church can only cope with one person at a time who thinks they are infallible.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------No  No Art Work of the week – more importantly a link to the March in March website.

https://www.facebook.com/MarchinMarchCanberra/photos/gm.225978640919786/611950788874269/?type=1

The thinks you can think up if only you try

I am of the view that you definitely do learn something new every day.

This week I’ve learnt a heap of stuff about spline, priming pumps, giggling teenagers, dorito eating goats, idiot pop stars and embarrassing politicians. But for all that, the things I have mostly learnt are related to my body and what I can do to look younger and fresher if I use a particular range of cosmetics. 

I just have to share:

1. Eye mites.

I have eye mites- everyone does! I should never use waterproof mascara as I cannot cleanse my face properly and the eye mites will just continue to live on in my eyelashes causing me problems. For the same reason, I should change my mascara every three months as the eye mites take up residence in  the tube and I just wipe them back on every time I use it. 

And all this time I thought my eye problems were caused by hay fever.

2. My skin has friction.

Now I don’t know how it gets its friction as my understanding of the term is that it is the force produced when two things rub against each other. So my guess is it must come from the eye mites falling off my eyelashes and skating around my face. But I can fix it by using primer -  not the stuff you put on your walls before painting, but the stuff Napoleon Purdis says is a crime not to use.

3. I can buy a product which is 10 products in one, one of which is a mattifier . 

Is that the same as permeate free?

4. I should take collagen caps which gives me collagen from the inside out.

It puffs up your skin and blows out the wrinkles - sort of like injecting silicon into a sponge so it oozes out and fills up the holes and wrinkles. I can feel it doing me good already!

5. My skin has muscle memory.

Does that work like brain memory?

6. I need exposure to  vitasphere molecules.

I had NEVER heard of vitasphere molecules so I Googled them. The only sites that mention them are for one particular cosmetic company, but it’s described so nicely:

Vitasphere Technology helps to deliver antioxidants, vitamin A, C and E to the cellular layers of the skin. As these tiny time-release capsules come in contact with your baby skin cells they lock onto the cell. 

If the cell is thirsty the molecule will start releasing vitamins, oil & water to your cell until it if full.  Think of it like a little sprinkler nourishing your skin cells – they release oil or water depending on your skin’s requirement at any given time.

Ah ha…so it’s a sprinkler system that nurtures my baby cells. I wonder how they have been surviving for the past 60+ years? It’s a wonder that my skin didn’t soak up the entire swimming pool contents every time I jumped in.

7. I have glue on my skin

Well, obviously, because if I use a particular cleanser it will dissolve the glue that holds my dead skin to my face and I will be able to scrape it away in a white visible layer.

I wonder if it works with egg?

8. My skin ages 7 years each time I sleep with my make-up on.

That makes my skin approximately 163,520 years old. I think I look pretty good for my age!

9. I need optilight technology.

Funny, again Dr Google only finds me references that lead to one cosmetic company. But if I use it I will not have glowing skin when I have my photograph taken as optilight will absorb the excess lighting and make me even more beautiful.

10. Bacne
That’s back acne  in case you haven’t heard of it before. It’s the stuff you get when you wash your hair and the animal fats and fillers from ‘other’ shampoos run down your back and create a layer of acne forming matter.  We’ve all got it, it’s just that you can’t screw your head around far enough to see it, so better switch to this better stuff today.

I’m reminded of Doctor Seuss (real name Theodor Geisel- there’s another thing I have learnt this week):

Oh the thinks you can think up if only you try!

What's natural about the natural order?

I started life as a teacher of English and History. One of the first classes I taught was feudal history to Year 8 students and I clearly remember the order of society was on the syllabus.  We learnt about  ‘a society based on status and prestige, a society based on the division of orders according to one's function -- those who work, those who fight and those who pray. ’ (http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture23b.html) and looked upon this as the natural order.

My students in early settlement Mount Druitt loved building castles and learning about the warfare, but even in their government relocated status, were really not that connected to believing that if their parent was a garbo, so would they have been expected to be, because that was how god wanted it .

I’m frequently jolted into understanding that what I take as normal in the world is often not so – there seems to have been a lot of sudden bumping against other people’s reality of late. 

Not the least of which has been the world of Cory Bernardi and his notion of ‘natural order’.

Julia Gillard tried to warn against the anti abortion lobby rising like a phoenix under the conservative old school tie. Who would have predicted it would stick up its Medusa head quite so soon.

One of the things this particular political strain is good at is language and rhetoric. Bernardi’s reference to pro-choicers as ‘pro-death’ and abortion as the ‘death industry’ leave no doubt that he has achieved his aim that he is : ‘not going to hide behind ambiguous words’ (ABC Interview http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-06/cory-bernardi-says-pro-choice-is-pro-death/5183852). 

Ambiguous? 

No indeed. 

Highly charged, emotive, provocative, offensive language?

Hell yes!

I’ve listened to him railing about his right to speak out against political correctness claiming it stifles debate. Yet for mine he lambasts political correctness so as he may proffer intolerant, discourteous, unkind, bigoted, inconsiderate, faith based ideology that masquerades as the ‘natural order’. 

I suggest, dear senator,  that you do a bit of Googling to see what the natural order actually consists of.

Having not insulted enough of the population he takes on single families, same sex relationships, green philosophy and Islam claiming:

“You can't tamper with tradition and not expect there to be adverse consequences.”

Mmmm does that mean that traditions like child abuse; female genital mutilation, stoning of adulterers; infanticide should be left alone? 

You can’t have it both ways Father Bernadi.

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The Bony Rabbit

I’ve been a bit of a slacker in the blogging department of late. What with finalising a research project, completing enough Fans of Idle Hands products to take to the holiday markets, and the lead up to the festive season, all thoughts of writing have fizzled into the dust. If only my indignation had likewise!

At the end of 2013 I had still not been polled. Despite my constant bewildered and befuddle state, the world refuses to change and the bony rabbit blithely appears on television saying nothing more than that he is winding back to the Good Ole Howard era and how everything that has occurred in the last six years or so will be reviewed, dismantled, stomped on, revised or chucked into the nether reaches of a Mad Max movie. 

I have not become endeared to the Liberal regime as it rolls out its activity of deconstruction and am surprised that I can find no one who openly admits to having voted for this melange of wedding and sporting event attendees. 

What I do wonder is what has to happen for a general incensing of the Australian public – I don’t mean the incensing  that used to waft out of thuribles in Catholic services – that, incidentally, probably eroded the hairs of my nose so it is now sensitive to every bit of pollen that appears in the air. No, I mean the mass disgust and displeasure that led to a Russian Revolution or the overthrow of Napoleon. OK, that’s probably a bit extreme, but you get the picture.

I figured that if the US could survive Bushe’s squared and other right wing conservative movers and shakers, that Australia could probably limp through until the next election when someone, somewhere, will recognise that we need a leader with vision, guts, social conscience and integrity. I don’t care what their politics!

But I’m beginning to doubt our chances of surviving relatively unscathed:

• Marine parks dissolved (not quite literally just yet) and the door open for reef mining,
• Agreed science questioned (‘What is this climate change thingy of which you speak?’)
• Women backfooted, (Virginal white dresses, Julie Bishop and Sophie Mirabella…need I say more!
• Gonsky gonskied (Just what is our policy today Christopher?)
• The Disability Insurance Scheme at risk (I hear of the large number of people who applied in Canberra from the association of the blind, only one person was granted the benefit – if this is true, when did blindness move off the disability list?)
• $6 tokenistic medical tax for visits to doctors and emergency departments (Hmmm… public policy about get active, undertake preventative medical practices, work harder and longer = more visits to the DR= ‘over servicing’= tokenistic medical tax???   Again I ask, where is the understanding of equal and opposite consequences  laws of physics?) Just an aside, my suggestion is put a hefty tax on absolutely elective cosmetic surgeries – I read that Australians paid over $665 million on these services last year.
• Shut down of information so that there is no transparency of government.
• And, of course, pissing off our allies by eavesdropping on their families and pilloring the ABC for reporting the scandal..

I’m beginning  to wonder what our democracy will look like when we at last put the rabbit brained schemes behind us and awaken from our politically induced coma

Happy New year everyone! 

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ART WORK OF THE WEEK
All creative energies have been temporarily suspended having exhausted them in pre-christmas tea cosy mode and in food prep for the celebratory season's functions.