Quizzing the Quandry

This week I am in a quandary – confused and bemused by the rhetoric and pseudo expertiseism (deliberate coinage) of politicians and journalists – but hey, what’s new?

I don’t claim to be an expert on international diplomacy and the friends who I have that do, advise me that the standard line is: We do not make comment on matters of Australian security hence  the repeated quote by John Frydenberg,  Chris Bowen, and Kurt Campbell on Q&A last night. And it obviously accounts for Tony’s reluctance to explain the actions that have so upset Indonesia.    

If one takes the views expressed by Julian Burnside and Tara Moss (Q&A panellists as well) that the dilemma with Indonesia is about phone hacking, and not spying, then the whole thing takes on a different perspective. 

This is a manners problem: you do not hack people’s phones – especially those of your friends and their families. It’s just impolite and disrespectful, and it deserves an explanation.

Equally I am perplexed by the Productivity Commissioner’s floating of the idea that we should all be working until we are 70.  That’s all well and good provided one remains physically and mentally active and capable of performing one’s duties effectively.

 But more than that it depends on workplaces that see post 45 year olds as valuable contributors – sure there are exceptions, but I hear repeated instances from friends and acquaintances that once it was revealed in the workplace that they were nearing 60 the questions began to be asked about why they were still working, when they were planning to retire, and many were not too subtly levered out. 

 

The last boss I had in my permanent work life actually said out loud: I love bright young things – they are so enthusiastic and I would rather have them around me. Not an affirmation for those who were beyond the first flush of youth.

I’ve had to look up Crispin Hull’s credentials given his opinion piece in Saturday’s Canberra Times regarding the decline of literacy and his championing of Kevin Donnelly and the phonics movement. His bio reveals he was a journalist with the local paper from 1972-2002 when he began to lecture in journalism at the local university. He had a short three months stint in the UK during that time, and completed a law degree in 1977.

So, I ask you, where is his legitimacy as a literacy expert and his credible data to support his claim that teachers are choosing to teach literacy using ‘post modernist claptrap’ ( Donnelly’s description of the  whole language approach) because it makes life easier for them.  What a load of twaddle!

My experience after 33 years as a teacher and education advisor is that in the teaching of literacy, as in all things, different methods work for different students. One of my children learnt to read using the phonics method, one the whole language approach. Both, now adults, are capacious readers, meticulous speller, excellent writers and grammar Nazis. 

Mmm Crispin: data that refutes your argument!

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Art Work of the Week

Perhaps Tony could work it out over a nice cuppa?

On Quiche and Cream

I’ve been checking the phases of the moon, the alignment of the planets, the leaves at the bottom of my tea cup and have stopped short of sifting through the entrails of a sacrificial chook to determine why the world is out of wack.

Brutus ,the intermittently laying hen, has been down in the mouth for a week refusing to move off the nest and reluctant to get to her feet. I think she heard me checking out the sharpness of the tomahawk and has come to her senses –she’s now upright, trying to look chipper– reprise number two, and more to the point of this post, no innards to decode.

But  let’s get back to a world gone crazy. I’ve seen no falcons being killed by owls, or horses turning wild and eating each other as they did when Macbeth fell of the perch, but there has been plenty of the heavens rumbling their belly full, spitting out great tennis ball sized hail stones and spouting rain – to paraphrase Lear.  And, I’ve read the Canberra Sunday Times.

Some weeks back the ACT government passed a law about community groups having to appoint a qualified food safety officer if they were holding barbecues or food stalls more than five times a year. Of course, well meaning volunteer groups who cook a good sausage to support local causes have been up in arms – as they should be, and Bunnings is wondering who is going to man the Saturday morning shop front  breakfast. 

I thought this was government gone meddlingly mad – but they weren’t finished. I went off to the coastal clime of Coffs Harbour for a few days and returned to find that there are now even more fingers in the pie, so to speak. A local school fete has been banned from serving a number of foodstuffs – most particularly the popular quiche- because as a health spokesperson put it:

 ‘dishes that might contain food poisoning bacteria  were considered potentially hazardous and included casseroles, rice dishes, quiches, spring rolls and any food containing meat, dairy or moist cereal products or ingredients’…… Oh, and ‘cream and custard’.

One of my roles in a past life was to manage issues that arose in local schools and the media. I cannot recall a single time in the eight years of my tenure where someone complained of being/or was actually, poisoned by enjoying the delights of a dairy drenched dainty.

Last year I had to confess I held some similar views to Mark Latham, and that was painful for me. Now I have to make an even bigger admission to sharing the Bostonian views about government getting their noses out of things that don’t concern them.

I’m happy to buy a nice spring roll, a cream oozing jam sponge, a custard tart, a takeaway dish of curry, or even a dollop of rice with a couple of bacon bits sprinkled through without thinking it may be my last meal.

And if that wasn't enough maddness there was the article on “Reclaiming the Vagina”.  Surely there are enough things for a girl to worry about than whether her bits are attractive and whether she should have surgery to get them neatly nipped and tucked. 

 I’m reminded of the scene in Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café where Evelyn, in a bid to ‘find’ herself so she is more attractive to her boofhead husband, joins a women’s support group. She had wanted to belong, but when the woman said that next week they should all bring a mirror so they could look at their vaginas, Evelyn never went back.

I’m with Evelyn. 

Give me a world full of sane responses.

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Art Work of the Week.

The activity has been very lean over the past few weeks so have had to dig in the archives: a fleshy pink Coffs Harbour Lilly might do the trick!

Acrylic on canvas 78x56cm

Big Fat Zero

 It has started.

 I read a memo that circulated to Australian Government departments a week or so ago about freezing recruitment and not renewing contracts as Tony lunges towards his promised 12000 job cuts to Public Service.

I was bemused as they rolled out the old chestnut  rhetoric about “no cuts to services” as a result of the staffing reductions.

So, if that’s the case, why is it that a document I requested (and paid for already) which should have been delivered ‘within 30 days’ is now nearly 2 weeks overdue? And more to the pint, why is it that my email inquiry about where the job is up to has been answered with a computer generated message that gives me a number for the inquiry and says: ‘We aim to respond to inquiries within 30 days’.  

Now I have two numbers: the original order number and the inquiry number, but I still have no papers, no answers and no service. 

Mathematically you are on to a winner Tony.

Here’s my reasoning.

Let “No service in the first place” =0 

Let “No cuts to the original service” = 0

Therefore 0-0=0 = no reduction in services

Bingo!

Gotta love weasel words. 

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Art Work of the Week 

This week's work has not been realised - an indication of what could happen if Tony's policies applied in my world- no artist; no art!

Of Tim and God

It’s been a Tim Winton sort of week -the man of the muted Hawaiian tea shirt, sand swept shorts and tied back pony tail-  master of the Australian language and psychic of the landscape.

'For while Perth had bulldozed its past and burried its doubts in bluster, Fremantle nursed its grievances and scratched its arse'

Tim is God- literally- omnipresent at the moment.

He’s been on my bedside table; on telly; in The Big Issue; on the stage; in my weekend magazine; across the screen; and talking to a middle aged,  middle class melange at the ANU last week where the theatre booked out and he was beamed like Scotty into the adjoining spaces.  

Someone asks him if he keeps notes or a diary and he responds that he ‘sort of does’. I’ve seen what a writer’s notes look like: scraps of paper torn off the ends of monthly bills and junk mail fliers with snippets of observations, crumpled and crinkled and poking between brick stacks of newspapers and sniffed and thumbed magazines – a mind map in chaos.

I’ve had Eyrie since the day it was released, but I have been resisting the temptation to open the pages as I want the ‘time to be right” – the time when I can put everything else aside and just read from cover to cover, immersed again in a world drawn by a master craftsman with his pencil and paper manuscript.  

The Turning is playing at the Nishi building with it’s challenge to completeness – fitting given Tim’s reply that he doesn’t need a story to have a nicely tied ending. Here the scaffolding is the building, the timber cut-offs the substance, is it coming or going or being?

The Western Australian government site says that: Travelling to Wittenoom presents a public health risk from exposure to asbestos fibres which may result in contracting a fatal disease, such as mesothelioma, asbestosis or lung cancer.  But the ghost town is in the news again with proposed changes to legislation to allow asbestos related disease sufferers  to make a second compensation claim on their illness. And I’m back to Dirt Music – the words and the music, its verandah wines and the bone in the bed. 

And I wonder is that is Lucky Oceans playing with his back to the camera framed in a doorway sliding up and down the frets?

Maybe it’s the vastness of the landscape, the fury of the sea, the remoteness  and ruggedness, the sense of coming into being, a place where escape, forgottenness and isolation is still possible, that produces the likes of Tim Winton, Archie Weller, The Pigram Brothers, Robert Drewe, the Waifs.  

My granddaughter came back from One Direction gasping for air – Tim’s writing does it for me!

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Art work of the Week

The Nishi Building New Acton

     

'Estatic' about 'Backed' egg tarts

I have frequently espoused the value of life-long learning, so here are some thoughts on a few little treasures gleaned over the past weekend.

 Let’s start with the Canberra Times:

I’ve discovered that Gina Rinehart is the biggest victim in the current law case being waged with her children. To quote: she had been so selfless that she could not retire or pour her billions into philanthropy. Oh that I was such a victim!

The Danish royals have had a bit of coverage as well and Saturday’s edition  cited: In a recent survey Danish people emerged as the happiest in the world. What is their secret? ‘a secure life’, said the princess,’ and a well developed social system: not many people fall through the net.

A bit of thought and learning there for the Tea party and its associated mad hatters I think

When anyone next suggests I am overweight I will endeavour to confuse them by saying it is my embonpoint. Perhaps they will think I have some dreaded disease and slink away to eat another lettuce leaf. I on the other hand will know it is my Rubanesque physique that is in question thanks to the weekend article on The rise of the brassiere.

In my attempt to find a synonym for some obscure cryptic crossword clue I can across phubbing- the habit of snubbing someone in favour of a mobile phone. The interesting bit of that was that I discovered the word had been coined on behalf of Macquarie Dictionary of Australia to promote a new edition and had been circulated through social media to see how long it took to be used in general.

My granddaughter is learning to drive And I’m learning a lot of stuff about roads and road use that I had either forgotten or never knew – like a blue reflector on the road indicates a fire-hydrant  nearby. All I now have to remember is to carry my fire hose with me whenever I am out and about and I will be ready for action. 

And there are some things you learn that just continue to cause despair:

•  I know that locally we have a version of Chinese cooking that could hardly be called authentic, but Backed egg tarts – really? Get it right Canberra Times.
• When did Guarantee become guaranty?  Answer: on the banner behind a well known pots and pans brand’s stall at Floriade. Spare me please.
• I’m wondering if estacy is some form of diluted euphoria. If I believe the real insurance lady I will be estatic about what their life cover can deliver for me. Did no-one actually listen to the actor delivering the lines and pick up what she was saying?

Don’t get me started on nuclear.

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Art Work of the week

You can see this hanging at the Tuggeranong Art Gallery at the Capital Chemist 2013 Art Awards.

Vapour Trails. Acrylic on canvas

 

Secret Squirrel

Radio National is running a competition asking people to tell stories about their secrets.

 I’ve found out a lot of secret stuff lately.

1. There must be a secret book held by judges that tells them it’s OK to sentence a man who  streaks at  the football match to a jail sentence because he breached his bond to be of good behaviour for doing the same thing last year; but it’s OK to put a pedophile on a good behaviour bond even when he has pleaded guilty to four representative counts of aggravated sexual assault and one of aggravated indecent assault over five years with his own child.

2. Tony Abbott believes in secrets: If he doesn’t tell us about refugee boat arrivals, then we won’t be able to ask questions about it. Obviously his election campaigning held secret words:

 We will Stop (telling you about) the Boats

3. The ACT has secret rules for getting a learner’s permit. A near 16 year old cannot prove their residency unless accompanied to the application line with a parent or legal guardian who can swear they live where they say they live.  Ask them where that is written in the instructions/ on the website and all they can produce is an internal memo to staff that makes a vague and ambiguous reference to Statutory Declarations. Regardless of having a passport, a birth certificate and numerous bits of other identification and verification, you cannot beat the secret rules of the system. So make sure you take a day off work when your teenager needs to get their permit.

4. There are secret rules for being the best candidate for the job: that accounts for why our only female minister is Barbie Bishop.

5. Norfolk Island is a well kept secret. I had a week there recuperating from the election results. It was bliss.

6. http://www.postsecret.com/ is a site that invites people to anonymously post in their secrets on a post card. This is my favourite:

                                        

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, since 1970 the US and Australia have eavesdropped on the rest of the world from Pine Gap. 

OMG - does that mean my Blog audience is way bigger than I thought?