Category Archives: Politics

23/02/2012

A Labor Heart

By The Cultured Animal

I wonder what it means

to have a good Labor heart;

does she beat with steady rhythm,

or does she stop and start?

Would she race, when faced,

with a good, Labor agenda?

Or is she close to breaking,

and there’s nothing that can mend her?

Treasurer Wayne Swan released a statement last night slandering Kevin Rudd, who has just resigned as Australia’s Foreign Minister while abroad in Washington.

Swan’s negative, personal attack on a colleague is not particularly noteworthy, given the current tone of political debate in Australia. What is interesting, however, is his gentle invocation of a loving mother figure in Prime Minister Gillard.

A far cry from the “barren”, spinster-ish character who coldly disposed of Rudd in taking the Prime Minister’s office, Swan alludes to Gillard’s “heart” not once, but twice. He said she has “a good Labor heart”  and “has always known in her heart … something Kevin Rudd has never understood”.

If we see it Swan’s way, Labor will be left with a choice at its leadership ballot on Monday between Kevin – an apparently arrogant, self-important control freak – and the loving, open-hearted, patriotic Julia.

We don’t need to create caricatures of our politicians – they do it for us.

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

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

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

23/10/2011

Censorship and Digital Rights. Or, Things Worth Rioting About

By The Cultured Animal

There is no Such Thing as Society

David Cameron tried to blame this year’s violent riots in England on the family – or lack of discipline and good solid values therin – forgetting that dearest Maggie’s maxim “There is no such thing as society” effectively dismisses any kind of social unit. Um, The Family. (Woops.)

He also suggested his government may seek to block user access to Twitter and other social networks in the event of similar future crises, to prevent violent calls to action from going viral. While this sounds well within general principles of law and order, in practice it would probably have about as many black holes and failings as Melbourne’s fraught Myki system, with its tendency to overcharge well-meaning passengers (check out this wonderful new website created by a disgruntled but clever uni student, which tracks the half-baked system’s myriad errors). If a government-implemented, multi-million dollar transport ticketing system – a seemingly basic thing that exists in just about every city large enough to have its own public transport system – can’t even do its job, I don’t see the type of advanced and quick-to-react filtering necessary for these proposed objectives happening properly anytime soon. (Drawing a long bow? I don’t know, I just wanted to slag off Myki.)

Just say an innocent person were to have their communication pathways curtailed in such a hypothetical future scenario, through error or simply bad judgment, the act may go far beyond merely inconveniencing an individual. During a crisis, not being able to contact, say, family to let them know you’re alright, may prove very distressing – or worse – for the individual in question.

There is also a murky grey area as to what exactly constitutes bad behaviour – where to draw the line between a bit of good ol’ hearted fun and incitement to criminal activity. For example, a more boisterous friend of mine was once apprehended at the airport and questioned for several hours after stupidly making allusions to anarchist bomb plots during a flight home. In other words, the tendency to take language too literally in matters of security is not new. Perhaps we need to introduce some kind of guage for a sense of humour when recruiting law enforcement professionals in future.

Minefield, I say.

Some good old fashioned Poll Tax rioting

The internet is of course not the only means of communication available to us in high-stakes situations. Responding to the riots, Crikey correspondent Bernard Keane wrote that “No one would seriously talk about targeting the phone system because it is being used to coordinate illegal activity, but the internet is considered fair game.”

How wrong he was. Only weeks after England’s riots, San Francisco government authorities blocked mobile phone networks to quell a protest against public transport provider BART. (Clearly I had a bad experience on the bus today.)  The protest was organised following the shooting of an armed man by BART security guards. BART’s response to the planned protest (which never materialised anyway) was widely criticised as a violation of constitutional rights to freedom of speech.

From Wired:

Some constitutional scholars are likening BART’s actions to an unlawful suppression of First Amendment speech — a digital form of prior restraint. Others, however, say BART’s move would probably survive a court challenge, and will likely be copied by other government agencies as the use of mobile technology and social networking by protesters grows.

If the latter is indeed the outcome, what this incident (along with the political fallout after England’s riots) highlights is insufficient legal frameworks in the area of digital rights and freedoms. This void will become increasingly problematic as we – as a global society – further entrench ourselves in digital realms, increasingly living aspects of both our personal and professional lives via digital media.

Payback: notorious hackers Anonymous leave their mark on BART's website

Central to these trends, and the reason why we get so up in arms at the thought of having our personal communications technologies neutered by authorities, is the growing sense that access to these technologies is some kind of basic human right*. Remember, there was a time when parents didn’t install iPhones in their six-year-olds’ lunch boxes, “Just in case of emergency”. This idea of access to communicative media as a personal right underlines the argument behind governments all over the world advocating for national broadband networks**, and it also largely informs the political sentiment behind open-source software, although this is more concerned with the means of production of these tools, rather than access to them (something for a later discussion).

The internet (though just one example of a communicative tool) is also largely anarchic, so when a liberal democratic state seeks to enforce its power in these realms, the outcomes are unlikely to be straightforward. It’s a whole different world out there, a whole other jurisdiction (or lack thereof). We don’t react very well to limitations online, because we’re so used to not having them when we go there. Communications technologies feel like the ultimate freedom: they allow us to extend our private selves – engage our personal and professional relationships – and any intrusion on this is heading into dangerous waters indeed.

I’m sure David Cameron has been shitting himself for the last three months as to how the riots were able to happen so quickly and violently, and how the British government might prevent anything similar from happening in the future. It will be interesting to see what kind of legislation is developed in these tricky areas as a result.

Communications Technologies: Criminal or Detective?

In a strange twist of irony, while the UK government ultimately did not seek to increase any legislative powers over social media networking sites, it has been able to use them to efficiently track and convict perpetrators of some of the crimes in question, as a measure of deterrence as much as anything else. Similarly, in the United States in August, a large group of youths robbed a Maryland 7-Eleven, but most of them were captured within days after police posted security camera footage online. The irony is that, as with England’s riots, the robbers are believed to have organised the incident via social media.

Any means of communication can clearly be put to good use or to bad. Research from The Guardian shows that during England’s riots, Twitter activity was mostly of a sentiment against violent, criminal acts – leaning instead towards spreading helpful alerts during the crisis and organising the riot cleanup in its aftermath. But then, social media’s potential for use in either direction is probably obvious to everybody but a technological determinist.

I suppose the moral of the story is, if you’re going to use social networks to incite (and therefore, according to British law, commit) serious crime, make sure your personal online account doesn’t lead straight to your front door. I bet those Anonymous folks could give you some pointers – if only you could find them.

…

*There I go again with some good ol’ first world centralism, but let’s take that as a given for the purposes of context and relevance.***

**Well, okay, so that might also be economically motivated.

***Course, I should stop leaving this same disclaimer in every bloody post about technology, and just put it in a page. One day. When I get round to writing those “About” pages.****

****In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m going through a bit of a PoMo Footnotes Phase. Sign of madness, or sign of the times? You decide.

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Politics, Technology

05/05/2011

Australia, the Spoilt Child

By The Cultured Animal

Apologies to all two of the Cultured Animal’s current readers. Your Dear Beast is incapacitated at this moment. No, it’s not a Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumour; nor, unfortunately, a holiday to Tasmania (although that is coming, and you are warranted in expecting a post on MONA shortly thereafter). Your Most Highly Distinguished Animal is in fact working very hard … elsewhere. For now, here’s a few brief words in place of a proper post.

Robert Manne and Australia’s New Complacency

I have just toddled along to Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre to listen to Monsieur Manne say a few brief words on what he calls the current “complacency” in Australian politics (though he doesn’t credit himself as being the first to describe it as such), and consequently in our dominant cultural outlook.

Atop his soapbox, Manne outlined a few concepts which are dealt with far more thoroughly in his new book, Making Trouble (which I haven’t yet read but look very much forward to doing so). He had some rather poignant things to say, none of which were particularly new to Your Animal but which were so succinctly put – indeed, so wondrously illuminated by his Whitlam-esque, sparkly eyes – as to make one weep. Thank you, our ever eloquent Sir Manne. (I love that his surname is a like “man” but feminised, don’t you?).

Here are some corkers:

  • The Iraq war: “a castle of fiction”, the meaning of which has “never really been accepted”.
  • He encouraged his audience to participate in Andrew Bolt’s blog “by telling him he’s a fuckwit”.
  • My favourite, which is particularly pertinent to a previous entry on recent austerity protests in the UK, was his discussion about the role of more extreme protest in our political landscape. Manne predicted many young people might fight our cultural and political complacency by landing ourselves in jail through more extreme acts of protest. He specifically did not condone, however, acts of violence. He instead suggested there might be many things that young, disillusioned and angry folk can do in a “nonviolent”, “considered” and “principled” manner, in order to “prick” the offending cultural smugness he describes.
  • Just an appreciative note on design: the cover of Making Trouble features, as you see above, a red balloon. I do love such tongue-in-cheek symbolism, and I yearn to be one of the many who will yield that sharp needle …

Tanner Fights Back

Speaking of political culture, there seems to be a phenomenon where ex-Labor pollies emerge shortly after the end of their political careers, literary tomes in hand, to expose the serious mess of the party system that has just chewed them up and spat them out. Lindsay Tanner continues this trend with his new book, Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy. Tanner and Manne share a disillusionment with the state of Australian politics, and both are hard at work in their recent books to parade the ruthlessness of its charade, the rotten fruitlessness of its game.

I do hope that any Australians out there with half a brain will listen to Robert and Lindsay’s words of wisdom, just as I once listened to Robert Lindsay’s words of wisdom.

Problem is, we’re all a little bit too complacent.

And would probably rather be watching season three of MasterChef.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Literature, Politics

24/04/2011

Rebecca Stead Shines a Light on Environmentalism and Politics for Young Readers

By The Cultured Animal

NB: This is not so much a review as a critique. If you’d rather read a proper review, or just want some background information, go read something like this.

Young adult writer Rebecca Stead won the prestigious Newbery Medal last year for her fabulous book, When You Reach Me, a beautifully woven sci-fi mystery that’s largely an homage to Madeleine L’Engle’s classic, A Wrinkle In Time (which also won a Newbery Medal, back in 1962). Her first novel, aptly titled First Light, has now been released in Australia. The novel is loaded with political intrigue and progressive thinking. It does not disappoint.

Where Two Paths Cross

12-year-old Peter is on the trip of a lifetime in Greenland, accompanying his scientist parents on a 6-week climate change research field trip. While his parents busy themselves with important sciency things, Peter inadvertently crosses paths with Thea, a mysterious girl with a very cool snow dog. Turns out Thea comes from a small civilisation of people who live inside the glacier upon which they are standing (don’t ask me how they can survive without any vitamin D – just suspend your disbelief. After all, they can also telepathise with dogs, or see and hear things beyond the usual human capacity). Her ancestors fled to Greenland from England long ago, after being persecuted for their enhanced capabilities. In Greenland they founded their sanctuary, Gracehope, next to an underground lake in the glacier; their survival is aided by brilliant, sustainable technologies we normal people could only dream of. But she believes her people’s destiny does not lie forever underground, and so she defies the closed-mindedness of her community and ventures on a forbidden trip to the surface, where her chance meeting with Peter will unravel the mysteries of the past and change everything.

An Allegory for Our Times

The problems facing Gracehope are an allegory for global environmental pressures today. Gracehope’s very existence is in danger: climate change is melting the surrounding glacier, and consequent geophysical changes are shifting the underground refuge ever closer to the sea. This is a plot device which further raises the stakes in what is already a page-turning drama, but it’s also symbolic of how global warming is threatening our own lives as we now know them.

The symbolic function of Gracehope works on other levels too. As it’s a closed geographical space with finite resources, its inhabitants are able to witness the impacts they have on their surrounding environment more immediately than elsewhere. The result is a respect for their environment and the enforcement of sustainable lifestyles. This includes making do with rations from the colony’s limited food supply (you can read whatever Communist theory you want into this, too), using sustainable technologies, recycling, and making do with what they have. Again, the transposition into our real world is easy: Stead is highlighting the impact we have on our environment merely by existing, and reminding us about our planet’s finite resources and its limited capacity to offer necessities to an ever-increasing human population. Unfortunately for us in the real world, the impacts of our modern lifestyles are all too often easy to ignore, especially when measurable changes are happening far off in other parts of the world.

Stead also presents dogs (or “Chikchu”, as they are called in Gracehope) as highly intelligent creatures who are integral to the survival of both Thea and Peter. As discussed here, endowing animals with respect and importance reminds us that we humans are just one part of a complex and grand natural order, and not necessarily always in charge.

Animal lovers will appreciate the strong bonds between characters and their companions in First Light

Even Families, Politics Divides

The rebellious Thea is juxtaposed by her conservative, fearful grandmother, Rowen. Rowen is a draconian, matriarchal figure who will do anything to thwart the young girl’s ideals, including abusing political privilege through lying to her people, concealing information that might impact their points of view. In this sense, Rowen represents a backward-thinking, fearful type of Conservatism, characterised by negativity and a Machiavellian clinging to power through whatever means necessary (I can think of plenty of right-wing leaders throughout history who fit this bill). Though hailing from a family who possesses enhanced senses, Rowen seems to lack much sense at all, beyond protecting her own interests and prolonging the confrontation of her fears.

Thea, on the other hand, represents youthful, progressive thought – the kind that moves mountains through mass protest, and which has historically led to all sorts of ground-breaking movements in history, from universal suffrage to anti-war movements to gay rights. She embodies the very idea of positive resistance that seeks to better people’s lives. Her stubbornness, though at times perhaps a bit hasty, renders her character all the more believable, rounding out her youthfulness. Sometimes conviction is no bad thing – otherwise, society would be stuck in the dark ages. Or under a glacier. The metaphors, oh, the metaphors …

Understanding The Other

Finally, Stead is concerned with tolerance. While Thea’s people themselves fled persecution for their difference, it’s interesting that Rowen is also overcome by a fear of the “other”; in her case, the “other” being the outside world, and the people who inhabit it. Hers is a prejudicial fear that has been passed down through generations since Gracehope was founded, and she appears incapable of shaking this viewpoint and seeing things for what they really are, let alone embracing change.

Stead highlights the theme of difference when the citizens of Gracehope gather in the council chamber to watch their children act in “Launch”, which is a bit like a Christian nativity play, but re-enacts the story of how Gracehope was founded (including the bits about persecution and death. Yes, they have their own symbolic martyrs). During the play, Peter, who has hitherto been hiding to prevent people from knowing about Thea’s trip above ground, finally reveals himself to the crowd. As the only fair-haired person these people have ever laid eyes upon, he certainly stands out. Although not made explicit, the scene subtly invokes elements of racism as Rowen attempts to paint him as an impostor, a liar and a danger to her people’s health and very existence.

When Thea first met Peter, she too had been initially fearful. But in the purity of her youth, untainted by prejudice, this fear was quickly superseded by curiosity and engagement in dialogue. Says her great aunt Dexna (who could not be more different to her sister Rowen): “[Thea] has known the courage to reach out where she was taught to shrink back in fear”. For Peter, that courage was always a given; this bravely curious young boy exhibits next to no fear at all. Through sharing, he and Thea are able to bridge their differences, learn from each other, and better understand their predicaments.

An underground lake, Gracehope’s life-blood. Image from molon.de.

A Treasure for Young Readers

Ultimately, what I love about First Light is not solely that it smuggles these interesting politics between its covers, but that it does so within a wonderfully crafted story in a refreshingly original setting. The fact that it is such a compelling and satisfying mystery means it delivers its political messages all the more successfully. Its leanings are never spelt out; rather, they form essential parts of the story, are integral to the plot itself. And for all its allegorical parallels, the story works because we see, in the social and familial structures of Gracehope, elements of humanity that are  familiar and true to real life.

While it seems the present generation is getting plenty enough education about global environmental issues, First Light is a very welcome addition to the body of children’s educational fodder, not least because it is able to personalise issues through well-rounded characters with whom readers can empathise. This is a great read for ages from about 9 upwards (or thereabouts – everyone’s kid is gifted, aren’t they? Mine will be reading this kind of book at five), and different reading levels will in turn glean varied levels of meaning from this richly layered story.

2 comments | posted in Environment, Literature, Politics

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

28/03/2011

Anarchy in the UK?

By The Cultured Animal

Is anyone else disturbed by the recent protests in the UK? I am for various reasons, most of which seem to throw up more questions than answers.


Call a violent protester a violent protester

I find it disturbing that the small minority of people who committed acts of violence during the protests have been dubbed ‘anarchists’. Anarchist philosophy does not necessarily espouse violence. On the contrary, it poses an alternative to the perceived violence of government. Certainly anarchist offshoots such as punk and skinhead subcultures have been associated with violence. But we must distinguish anarchist philosophy itself from these movements. Fair enough if these particular protesters were waving anarchist flags of their own, but it’s not helpful when responsible journalists throw the label around indiscriminately without any disclaimer.

So, stop calling violent protesters anarchists and start calling them something else. I don’t know. Be creative. How about British Ninjas (they wear balaclavas, it’s kind of cool).

Courtesy of http://www.northernsun.com
The end of pacifism?

I tend to come from the pacifist, Ghandi-loving school of thought that thinks violence is not going to give you a credible voice, and that people who throw ammonia-filled lightbulbs at police (who the hell thought of that anyway?) discredit a protest movement and give a bad name to all the other respectable citizens who are trying to get their, you know, mature and sophisticated voices heard. (Kind of like the way violent disgruntled youth appropriating anarchist symbols discredit the whole philosophy of anarchism).

I have never seen the kind of violence that is happening in London at protests in Australia (I’m talking about recent history, because I can’t claim to have attended any protests in the preceding century). Protests as I know them are sort of like a (noisy) walk in the park, after which you feel a bit exhausted, down-trodden and depressed. In 2003, millions of people around the world took to the streets to protest against the war in Iraq, breaking world records for the largest rally. There were an estimated 150,000 protesters here in Melbourne. The march was not only large but civil. Yet lovely Mr Howard and his government politely pretended none of this had ever happened and went ahead anyway. It didn’t matter how many people marched or how civilised they went about doing it. It was never going to change a thing. It seems, dear people, we have lost our power.

This does tends to make one feel a little bit cynical. And there are a couple of ways that could push you. You could just let the cynicism morph into apathy, go back home, turn on the TV and have yourself a nice big bowl of pasta, thank you very much. But if the problem that is getting people’s goat is really affecting enough people, directly, well, people are going to seek other methods of expression. A war happening in a distant country might stir moral upset in some people’s stomachs, but something like that is easy to forget once you’re back in your office chair. Having your pension cut, however – or your fifth child’s benefit cut, or your unemployment benefit cut – that is another kettle of fish entirely (let’s not get into kettling right now). That is something a lot of people can relate to. And if their government continues to ignore them, they’re only going to get more angry. If peaceful protesting achieves nothing … well, the people are going to get a bit less peaceful, aren’t they.

Throw a few molotov cocktails around Hyde Park – well, that’s bound to get the powers-that-be quivering on their ottomans. Maybe there is something to be said for the role of violence after all. It’s not our fault they didn’t listen the first time.

As for the punks and skinheads – wearing scary shit is intimidating, and that kind of has a way of helping you have things your way.

Without meaning to bang on about skinheads too much, I couldn’t fail to mention here Shane Meadows’ triumphant film This Is England. Equally brilliant is his heart-breaking, follow-up 4-part TV serial, This Is England 86. But watch out – it’s heavy stuff.

Long live the welfare state

I think it’s great that the Brits are sticking up for taxes. I’m sorry, did you say taxes? Like, OMG! But seriously, people seem to forget that taxes pay for many privileges and benefits that we have more or less come to expect in our civilised lives. Things like government schools, public health systems that foot the bill of your Dad’s unexpected triple bypass, or treatment for your daughter’s mental breakdown. Maybe a little beer money in your jeans pocket whilst you party away your student years. Or the funding for a local library, so you can educate yourself for free (I would just like to point out that former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating was a self-educated fellow, and such was the extent of his cool that he even had a musical written about him).

Taxes give back to our society in so many crucial ways. They give us a safety net. They make it that little bit harder to end up homeless. So it’s nothing short of criminally unfair that ‘tax’ has become a dirty word. In the same way that Anarchism has, and in the same way that Communism has. When Obama decided to strengthen the US public health system with reforms, everyone started calling him a dirty commie. Because taxing people in order to then give them back a safety net in case they get sick is, er, Communist. Yeah, with a capital C. WTF?

I don’t think people should ever have to pay beyond their means for a sickness that’s unlikely to be their own fault. It’s bizarre that the neo-conservatist obsession with privatisation has gone so far in a country that is supposed to be founded on civil liberties. Surely the right to equal access to health care, education, public transport and so on are part of these basic rights. And it’s the elected government’s job to manage these services. Otherwise what’s the bloody point of having a government.

Britain has a solid history of state welfare, and it’s clearly something that they’re proud to defend. So I say, hats off to the Brits for hanging onto public welfare for their goddamn lives, lest they get thrown back into the dark and dangerous experiment of Thatcherism. I’m not the first person to have commented that the violence curdling underneath everything is a throwback to something we’ve all seen before. Seriously, have the Tories learnt nothing?

An uncertain future

What might this mean for the future of British politics? Labor squandered their credibility and lost the last the last election, but people don’t seem too chuffed with the government(s) they voted in, either. What choices do the people have left, if not these three (unwise) monkeys? Oh fuckit, let’s go with anarchism …

*(I will conveniently ignore for the time being that we went ahead and re-elected that government)

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