Category Archives: Economy

26/01/2012

Don’t Care Much for Money? This American Life explains all …

By The Cultured Animal

For someone who used to sit up the back of my high-school Economics class listening to 90s indie-pop on a Discman – one headphone in my teacher’s ear – this is probably the clearest, most moving piece of journalism I have yet encountered about the Global Financial Crisis. It starts with background material on the invention of the Euro, then explains in layman’s terms just how and why Greece went topsy-turvy. The rest is history.

An unprecedented hit public radio program in the US, This American Life has an uncanny way of exposing the deceptiveness, corruption and sheer insanity that we are capable of as human beings. This outstanding documentary is no exception.

Critics had nothing but praise for the recent Australian tour by host of This American Life, Ira Glass.

3 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Economy, Politics

07/01/2012

Didn’t get the Jobs?

By The Cultured Animal

Hmmmmmmmmmmm .....

If any of you have been trying to get a hold of Steve Jobs’ bio in Australian bookstores since around Christmas time, you’ll have noticed you can’t get it. Anywhere. What nature of fool doesn’t order enough stock of 2011′s most anticipated biography, officially Amazon’s best-selling title of the year?

Well, here’s the reason: according to a sales rep from Alliance Distribution Services, a whole container’s worth of the books – we’re talking the kind of container that causes wharfie uprisings, or gets reappropriated as a temporary inner-city bar in an obscure location – followed poor Stevie into the afterlife when the truck that was transporting them rolled. Perhaps its course was sabotaged by a Google-powered GPS system.

Image courtesy of the talented miss Nicole Firth © 2012

According to the distributor, the book will be back in stores next month. Or you could just get it as an eBook. It’s what Steve would have wanted.

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Economy, Literature, Technology

29/12/2011

The Human Side of the Iron Lady

By The Cultured Animal

Meryl is spectacular as Maggie in the new biopic of Britain’s first female Prime Minister – albeit with nicer cheekbones.

A jubilant crowd behind the just-sworn-in Thatcher, in stark contrast to scenes of public unrest later in the film, and in Thatcher's career.

The Iron Lady has a good stab at humanising one of the most important women in history. This is mainly executed through the foregrounding of present-day Thatcher: an elderly, lonely woman suffering through grief for her deceased husband and battling with dementia. It’s perhaps an obvious premise to juxtapose the frailty of old age against the formidable power of Thatcher’s former self, but it is also structurally very fitting as a film device, as her increasingly fragmented mind experiences uncontrollable flashbacks into the past. The effect is moving and real, depicting the emotional difficulties of Alzheimer’s in a way that can be related to beyond Thatcher’s story alone.

The film boasts an excellent cast, including a brilliant performance from Olivia Colman (The Office, Peep Show, etc.) as Thatcher’s daughter – complete with fake nose and posh accent – and a plethora of unexpected but pleasing cameos from the likes of Richard E. Grant and Anthony Stewart Head. Jim Broadbent is endearing as jovial husband Denis, injecting a sense of humour into Thatcher’s serious, one-woman mission.

This is a beautiful looking film full of delightful colours and contrasts, with the hair and make-up departments getting special prominence in the film’s credits (Streep had a stylist all of her own). Thatcher’s always blue outfits evoke both a sense of patriotism as well as her steely demeanour, while her juxtaposition as a single female literally swamped by a crowd of male parliamentarians is as gobsmacking as it is inspiring.

Sexism is of course touched upon, but not examined in depth as a main theme – Thatcher was a conservative after all, not a radical feminist. Her response to sexism is mostly to ignore it altogether, or simply to take it in her stride with humour and gusto. “Shall I play Mum?” she says to the US ambassador, offering him a cup of tea, shortly after her belligerent tirade asserting Britain’s refusal to budge on the Falklands, and her threat that “many men have underestimated me before.”

Though Thatcher’s vision for Britain may have been misplaced in many ways, the film expresses her sheer conviction that her “tough decisions” were right for the country, and perhaps the film‘s strongest point is its subtle critique of Britain today. It has the ageing Thatcher say to a younger admirer, “It used to be about doing something. Now it’s about being someone,” while in the opening scene she escapes her carefully guarded residence to buy a pint of milk at the corner store, and a young (black) youth rudely and impatiently pushes past her at the counter.

It is also timely, of course, to remember the violent protesting which took place under Thatcher’s government. In contrast to this year’s riots, which were variously described as individualist, purposeless acts of violence and greed, the tumult during Thatcher’s era was far more overtly political. Present-day Britain is thus depicted as a product of the vacuousness and destructiveness of the cult of individualism that plagues the West today.

Which is more than a little bit ironic, given Thatcher’s belief that “there is no such thing as society”, and that placing accountability with the individual is the key to a prosperous Britain.

My friend commented on how apolitical this film is, but I wonder.

And then there’s this.

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Economy, Fashion, Film, Politics

13/08/2011

New Skills for a New World

By The Cultured Animal

The Cultured Animal recently tuned in to the always fascinating Australia Talks program on ABC Radio National. For those who don’t know the station, it’s nerd radio, and will fill your brain with wonderful things. (I may be harbouring secret ambitions to replace our number one crush Phillip Adams when he eventually … Well, let’s just say he’s not getting any younger.) For those who don’t know Australia Talks, it’s probably the only talkback program you should ever subject your ears to (because even Biggsy is still a left-wing bigot).

On this particular night the program focused on Australia’s growing service economy, fuelled by the time-poor among us who work so much we can’t clean our own bathrooms. Even if we did have the time, when it comes to doing, say, some of the Mr Fixit things around the house (or vehicle), many of us no longer have the necessary know-how that previous generations did.

It may be easy to view these trends as an indication of how sad we’ve become as a society, and I’m inclined to agree with one listener who commented that it’s a sorry state of affairs indeed if parents no longer have time to spend with their children. (Although this is surely opening up a can of worms, possibly feminist worms, and I don’t want them crawling all over me, so let’s just agree to leave the can shut for now, okay? Good.) It may be equally easy to view any loss of Mr Fixit or or Miss Needle-and-Thread skills as an indication that we are becoming stupider. Or lazier, in the case of outsourcing some of the more thrilling ‘chores’, such as cooking or cleaning.

I’ve put chores here in inverted commas because, as some listeners argued, mundane tasks can sometimes be therapeutic. Nothing like scrubbing the caked-on grime off the ol’ oven to get you feeling really at peace with the world. But these everyday tasks may also provide a more profound function: that of reconnecting us to our biological imperative for survival.

The Survival Scale

We have always remained, as human beings, connected to this survival instinct to some degree or another. Else, we would simply cease to live (or cease to be human). And by degrees I mean, for example, the degree between hunting down a wild boar, ripping it to shreds with a pair of overdeveloped incisors and then wearing its skin during winter; versus, say, buying some Chinese takeaway after a hard slog along Chapel Street foraging for bargain Ugg boots.

And such are the luxuries of contemporary civilisation*, many of us now have the freedom to choose just how far along this scale we might park our arses. Yet that place will probably never be static. You might weed your dear little garlic plants with your bare hands of a morning; download Cowboys and Aliens onto your laptop and tweet about it over a glass of imported Shiraz come evening. You know, mashing things up a bit. It’s all about the mash.

Your cherry-picking of life on the Survivor’s Scale may be deeply personal and conscious, as the retiree who embarks on a mission to free themselves of their worldly possessions and migrate to Costa Rica; or it may be altogether less thought-out, as the tech-savvy Gen Y who ensconces themselves in as much social media as possible through no other cause than an overabundance of time and a sneaking addiction.

Stop the Hysteria!

Viewing the growing trends in outsourcing of areas of our personal, day-to-lives as some kind of debased, immoral reflection on civilisation is really quite absurd when you consider that humans have been getting machines and other humans to do things for us for a very, very long time. Mechanisation and outsourcing merely represent more indirect routes to achieving the same end that we once might have pursued autonomously (ie. our biological imperative), but hinged onto the complex processes of civilisation. Any further developments in this direction, aided by our world of rapidly advancing technological gadgetry, are simply the next steps in the perpetual project of civilisation.

If we choose to live our lives towards the end of the scale, which will move ever further from its original, hands-on-the-dirty-dishes benchmark, the sacrifice may indeed be that we personally lose some skills, and that we distance ourselves, intentionally or otherwise, from that base survival instinct. But we also gain a whole bunch of other skills (even if those skills actually lie in the capabilities of our digital tools, rather than in our own personal ingenuity). My Nanna has probably never even seen the Internet, let alone dreamt what she could do with it.

New Skills for a New World

If our digital revolution is a cultural revolution on par with the impacts following the arrival of Gutenberg’s printing press, what amazing new roads might we travel down? There’s plenty of hoo-ha about how the Internet is making us stupider, mutilating our attention spans and whatnot; but what about the boon for lateral thinking it might create? It’s so easy to follow a train of thought in so many directions and, with a little discipline from distraction, who knows what truths these new tools may allow us to uncover.

An extension of the Internet’s function as a brilliant tool for making lateral connections is its ability to connect us with other people, all over the world. We know it’s good at this because of the unstoppable rise of social media. Plus these days people are just as likely to seek a personal online review of a product or place rather than some officially produced document. Are we beginning to trust each other more?

The more we connect, the better we may be able to understand each other, and, hopefully, not bomb each other. We may be able to use our new tools to move towards a more positive, global, social consciousness. Perhaps we are closer to the cosmopolitan dream than we thought.**

…

*Yep, this is me being Affluent-Countries-of-the-World-Unite!-centric again. Soz.

**I’m well aware that I’m coming to rash, starry-eyed and barely-referenced conclusions here, and that there might be a particularly large hole in my argument regarding the role of social media in e.g. the recent riots in England; but due to time constraints I’m going to leave the argument wildly unsupported. Contest at your will. But not without checking out what Jeremy Rifkin has to say first.

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Cartoons, Economy, Technology

27/07/2011

ABA #2: The Times They Are a-Changin’

By The Cultured Animal

As a very famous person once said, “the times they are a-changin.”

We are in an age of rapid technological change, most of which is not worth bothering to keep up with, because you can’t, not really. The book is a form of technology that has been with us for centuries, and many have compared this age of digital media as having a similar force of impact on reading, thinking and society in general as that following the arrival of Gutenberg’s printing press, which facilitated the beginnings of mass proliferation of the book. Today, the ubiquity of the Internet means the ways in which we consume books is changing – not just in terms of how and where we buy them, but in what form.

One of the most tense panels at this year’s ABA conference featured competing representatives from the budding eBooks industry marketing their wares. Meanwhile, one of the most compelling speakers was Mark Higginson of Nielsen, whose audience pounced on his wealth of statistical information about consumers’ online book-buying patterns. The flurry of tweeting activity during the presentation indicated a hunger for tangible information in an industry faced with an uncertain future.

It’s certainly not just a matter of choosing between a hardback or paperback any more.

But if we’re hungry for new information about customers, they’re equally curious. Unfortunately, some very uninformed comments and queries are frequently thrown at the good people who stand behind bookshop counters. Plenty of it is well-meaning and borne from a desire to correct any ignorance. Some of it is downright rude, to the point where one’s very purpose in life is undermined. (Sort of like when my musically challenged friend bags out my favourite bands, not understanding that, as a musician, it kinda hurts my feelings.)

We understand that as representatives of the industry we are generally better versed in decoding what the hell is going on for the general public. But when faced with the same handful of recurrent questions, such as “What do you think about Borders closing?”, or “Did you know I can get this cheaper online?”, day after day, how does one quell the spirit of Bernard Black, who lurks dangerously close to the surface of one’s amiable front? How, indeed, to maintain one’s excellent customer service skills as well as one’s dignity (and sanity)?

The thing is, we might look smart (especially when wearing our horn-rimmed glasses), but as The Papa of Independent Bookselling and Publishing Henry Rosenbloom said: “While there’s no clear way forward, we’ve come to the conclusion that we know as little about it as anyone else.”

I'll be honest, I just wanted an excuse to post a photo of Dylan Moran here.

Well, if we can’t give a definitive answer to all that complicated stuff, we can at least try to deal with the yucky ‘feelings’ part of it.

Becky Anderson’s Guide to Dealing With Annoying Questions 101

In her keynote address to the conference, Becky Anderson (President of the American Bookseller’s Association, 5th generation heir to Anderson’s Bookshop, and general champion of independent and community-focused business) read to us a beautiful statement on behalf of Anderson’s, summarising their thoughts and feelings on the collapse of Borders and the state of the industry. She insisted that “first and foremost, we are not celebrating … the loss of so many jobs”, and maintained again and again her mantra: “we [independent bookshops] are still here.” Barwon Booksellers, an absolute treasure trove of second-hand books in Geelong, Victoria, sent out a heartfelt letter to its subscribers expressing similar sentiments.

It’s a good idea, and one which I urge all booksellers to follow. Either that or leave yourselves open to continued onslaughts of misinformed flak, to which you’ll be forced to respond personally each time until you sound like a broken 78. (Which would be ironic, because they’re obsolete.) You can frame your letter in Christmas lights and stick it on the shop door, so as to spare your beloved customers the embarrassment of asking any awkward questions from the get-go.

But let’s emphasise the beloved part. It may be a good idea to, er, bookend your eloquently crafted message with something along the lines of: Dear customers. WE LOVE YOU. We love you because you love us, and your custom is the reason we’re still here. We’re still here, because you’re still here. Thank  you for choosing to buy all your Christmas presents here. We hope you’re not disappointed we don’t also sell turkeys, but did you notice that Borders was kind of turning into a homewares store towards the end? One day it’s turkeys, the next – no more books! By the way – did we mention how much we love you?

And so on, and so forth.

Booksellers and customers alike, please feel free to share below your thoughts on any of these matters. Perhaps you’ve done something similar to Anderson’s or Barwon Booksellers. Maybe you’ve experienced a Bernard moment. I hope you at least got a laugh out of it, or a glass of wine.

Stay tuned for Pip Lincolne’s Guide to Online Social Deportment 101. We do like hands-on ladies.

Ciao for now xx

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Economy, Literature, Technology

24/07/2011

The Cultured Animal at ABA Conference 2011

By The Cultured Animal

Today and tomorrow, along with our wild friend Kate from Bean There Read That, The Cultured Animal will be busy drinking terrible coffee, initiating itself into the glories of Twitter, and doing a lot of listening and talking. Maybe even at the same time.

That’s right, folks – it’s time for the annual Australian Booksellers Association conference. And what fascinating times the book industry is living in!

Bookish people have a lot of ideas, let me tell you. Your Animal will be mulling them over and regurgitating them with the usual treatment over the course of the conference, and no doubt for some time afterwards too. So please do stay tuned.

Two interrelated and recurring ideas worth mentioning so far are:

1. Australia’s Minister for Small Business Nick Sherry’s recent faux pas predicting bookshops will no longer exist in five years is clearly still a sore point for many of the conference speakers, who have hit back at this ludicrous presumption with their eminent wit and knowledge of evidence to the contrary.

2. Physical communities appear just as important as physical books for booksellers in the digital age. The idea that online retailing is killing bookshops is far from the whole story – a story which, in any case, is only really just beginning. Or, as keynote speaker Becky Anderson of the American Booksellers’ Association and Anderson’s Bookshop put it, ‘This whole thing with eBooks is still to me the Wild West. Who knows where the dust is gonna settle.’

In the meantime, everyone should get themselves acquainted with The Indigenous Literacy Foundation and some of the fabulous work they are doing in communities (including publishing Grug in the Karrawa language). And don’t forget to pop National Indigenous Literacy Day Septemebr 7th 2011 in your diary. We heart.

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Economy, Literature, Technology

13/04/2011

Navigating a Career in the Land of Plenty

By The Cultured Animal

Before the US housing bubble collapsed and sent economic markets reeling worldwide, GFC may well have stood for any number of things, including perhaps something very rude, if you think of words beginning with F and C. But now it’s part of our everyday vocabulary and has taken on the oblong shape of a political football. That’s an Australian football, by the way - here in the land of Oz we’ve been living in a relatively happy bubble.

The Lucky Country

I don’t mean to dismiss the hardship experienced by anyone here who may have consequently lost their job or been otherwise affected in the downturn. However, this week the Australian dollar hit another all-time high. If it gets any higher we’re gonna have to arrest it. This week it was also announced that unemployment levels have gone back to the lows they were before the downturn. Business as usual.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 37,800 new jobs appeared in our jobosphere last month. Perhaps that’s to accommodate the floods of Irish economic migrants landing on our shores. I should tell my Spanish friend to move here too – like most other young Spaniards, she can’t find even a crappy job, despite being university educated, experienced in a range of employment skills, and able to speak English. If only she could afford the airfare.

Spanish university students protesting last week about the country's high youth unemployment rates and government austerity measures (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki).

Meanwhile, the World Trade Organisation has come out and said Australia is a big fat pile of lazy when it comes to economic reform (it’s easy to become complacent when you’re raking in so much money just by digging up things like uranium from your backyard – oops, sorry Japan). So we’ve been advised to keep a tighter watch on things, lest a bust in our gigantic mining boom sees us sliding back into the dark ages of billy-cans and damper. To be honest, I feel like we’d be better to keep the focus on how to factor environmental sustainability into our economy, rather than this obsession with getting richer and richer in case poor old Mother England should ever try to catch up again. Ungrateful bastard child …

Besides, lazy my arse! We might be stereotyped as laid-back, no-worries types, but we’re bloody hard workers. My friend’s English wife has been quickly promoted from her temping job into a permanent role where she is now getting paid about twice what she would be earning back overseas. She’s also been given a laptop and mobile phone to take home with her. Welcome to Australia!

If anybody hailing from a less fortunate kingdom should ask why we’re doing so well, I’d advise you to conveniently forget to mention any such thing as a resources boom, and just tell them that their country is full of dole bludgers whose lax work ethics have created sloppy economies. Just look at Spain – their entire culture is founded on procrastination and three-hour lunch breaks! (I’m kidding, by the way. I think Spaniards really know how to live life properly. None of this Blackberry under your pillow business. It’s all wine and tapas in the sunshine, thank you. (Kidding again – actually, Spaniards work longer hours than many of their European counterparts)).

“The Workaholic” by Patrick Desmet

Competition is Good

Well, that’s what they say anyway, when they try to privatise national assets. But I digress.

I am currently in a bit of a career shake-up. I am incredibly blessed to work in a wonderful retail environment, with wonderful people, where I get to be immersed in my local community, immersed in books, listen to whatever CDs I want (plugging my band, yes!), and feel rewarded plenty enough with things like literature, film and chocolate – gratis. Oh yeah, and I have a really great boss.

But we live in a society that pushes us to achieve our potential (whatever that means), so I’m socially programmed to leave this lovely place eventually. The Great Genius inside me is whispering subliminally into my left ear, “You cannot live in a complacent Bookshop Limbo forever, lest you find yourself suddenly lusting after a sizely superannuation, a company car and a six-figure salary.” (That’s what it says, really!).

But perhaps it’s also the anxious little granny talking. She says, in her polite way, “Honey, I don’t even own my house, I’m gonna have to keep working till I’m a hundred. Why didn’t you become a lawyer, you douchebag?” Ridiculous, I know, to bang on about how prosperous and lucky are we who live in this country, and yet still harbour such feelings of fiscal insecurity. But then, we’re good at hypocrisy, us humans.

Now, I know the industry I’m seeking an entry into (editing and publishing, FYI) is highly competitive. And I’m pretty resigned to the fact that being a little bit creative can in some ways be a curse rather than a blessing when it comes to having a job that is both fulfilling and has a pay packet to match. But when I stick my head out and ask around about job prospects, routes into the industry or any other hopeful query to those who might be able to shed some light, I am pretty much always met with a negative response. It’s just so bloody competitive, you’ll have to work a million hours a week and live off baked beans – and even then you’ll probably never get the job you want. Give up now while you can still change your mind!

What's going to happen to all those bookish people who have lost their jobs at Angus & Robertson and Borders Australia stores? Into the bottleneck they plunge ...

Ugh. Pretty discouraging. But I wonder why this could be? Yes, it’s an attractive industry to pretty much anybody who fancies themselves a reader. But in a country with a booming economy and low unemployment, should it really be quite so competitive?

The Knowledge Nation

Remember Mr Measly – sorry, Beazley – and his “Knowledge Nation?” I think government has a lot to answer for in taking literacy a little bit too far. Trying to educate everyone is great, sure, but not everybody is necessarily destined for university. When I was at high school, the message was simple: if you don’t get an ENTER ranking that’s as high as Australia’s interest rates and subsequently go on to university, then you’re a failure, an outcast, and a waste of space. Good one – now we have a trades shortage. Some of those kids should have gone into apprenticeships (and then gone on to be paid a hell of a lot better than some crappy book-loving schmooze), but instead got nudged into uni (probably by their persistent private school pedagogues) and then sat at the back of the lecture theatre with their headphones in, just like they did in high school. They’ll probably have a mid-life crisis ten years prematurely when they realise they’re in the wrong job. All the while their existence adds to the frustrating bottle-neck in the entrance to the educated job market.

I have a second, still  more provocative, hypothesis. Are things also this competitive because women now make up close to 50% of our work force? I’m not for a second suggesting a reversion to the sexism of fifty-odd years ago. But, I do think it’s interesting to think about – that now there are so many more people going for the same jobs.

Everybody's favourite antiheroine: Mad Men's Betty Draper, a university graduate trapped in a (usually) immaculate housewife's body

3 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Economy, Politics

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