“ Hey forum members
I just became a member of this forum
(Great work by the admin, mods and seriously every member around.)
[etc. spam spam spam and spam etc…]”
we’d just like to say:
No, you didn’t. Now put your member back in your pants.
“ Dear Person of Faith Admittedly, there are one or two problems remaining to be ironed out there, but all the more reason for people of different faiths — Christian and Muslim, Sunni and Shia — to join together in meaningful dialogue to seek common ground, just as Catholics and Protestants have done, so heart-warmingly, throughout European history. It is these great benefits of faith that the Tony Blair Foundation seeks to promote. “We are focusing on five main projects initially, working with partners in the six main faiths” Yes I know, I know, it’s a pity we had to limit ourselves to six. But we do have boundless respect for other faiths, all of which, in their colourful variety, enrich human lives. In a very real sense, we have much to learn from Zoroastrianism and Jainism. And from Mormonism, though Cherie says we need to go easy on the polygamy and the sacred underpants!! Then again, we mustn’t forget the ancient and rich Olympian and Norse traditions — although our modern blue-skies thinking out of the box has pushed the envelope on shock-and-awe tactics, and put Zeus’s thunderbolts and Thor’s hammer in the shade!!! We hope, in Phase 2 of our Five-Year Plan, to embrace Scientology and Druidic Mistletoe Worship, which, in a very real sense, have something to teach us all. In Phase 3, our firm commitment to Diversity will lead us to source new networking partnership opportunities with the many hundreds of African tribal religions. Sacrificing goats may present problems with the RSPCA, but we hope to persuade them to adjust their priorities to take proper account of religious sensibilities. [ … ] “We are working with the Coexist Foundation and Cambridge University to develop the concept of Abraham House” I always think it’s so important to coexist, don’t you agree, with our brothers and sisters of the other Abrahamic faiths. Of course we have our differences — I mean, who doesn’t, basically? But we must all learn mutual respect. For example, we need to understand and sympathise with the deep hurt and offence that a man can feel if we insult his traditional beliefs by trying to stop him beating his wife, or setting fire to his daughter or cutting off her clitoris (and please don’t let’s hear any racist or Islamophobic objections to these important expressions of faith). We shall support the introduction of sharia courts, but on a strictly voluntary basis — only for those whose husbands and fathers freely choose it. [ … ] With so many of the world’s problems caused by religion, what better solution could there possibly be than to promote yet more of it?
Also in the New Statesman, A C Grayling, professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, says the word “god” …
… brings to mind the man-made phenomenon of religions, whose net effect on humanity now as throughout history has been, by a considerable margin, negative. It would be so just because of the falsity of belief; and the consequent absurdity of behaviour premised on the idea that there exist supernatural agencies who made this very imperfect world, and who have an interest in us that extends to our sex lives and what we should and should not eat on certain days, or wear, and so on. But it is worse than false: it is far too often oppressive and distorting as regards human nature, and divisive as regards human communities. It is a frequent source of conflict and cruelty. Monstrous crimes have been committed in its name. And more often than not it has stood in the way of efforts at human liberation and progress. [ … ] I would wish people to live without superstition, to govern their lives with reason, and to conduct their relationships on reflective principles about what we owe one another as fellow voyagers through the human predicament ““ with kindness and generosity wherever possible, and justice always. None of this requires religion or the empty name of “god”. Indeed, once this detritus of our ignorant past has been cleared away, we might see more clearly the nature of good, and pursue it aright at last.We, for one (or is that two? Now
The thing about the unemployed is that, well, they’re powerless; or rather, they’re disempowered, particularly by the feeling of being unemployed in a culture in which what you do, not to mention how much you make, pretty much defines who you are and what you’re worth.
On top of that they’re disempowered by the restrictions of poverty – the limitations on food (especially healthy food) and travel.
Unemployed people in Australia are placed by government and its proxies, the Job Networks and ancillary services, under stricter control orders and behavioural requirements than the most oppressed employed people.
What has to be understood is that unemployment in Australia is not so much a political, nor an economic, issue as it is a moral issue.
Unemployed people are suffering.
> Suffering is punishment.
> Punishment is retribution for sin.
> Therefore: > The unemployed have only themselves to blame.
As my (thankfully ex)-father-in-law would have said, “If they want a job why don’t they just bloodywell get off their arse and go out and get one?”
The unemployed are not just lazy; they’re devious in their determination to avoid work.
Because unemployment is a moral issue and the jobless are immoral (obviously) the attitude towards them and treatment of them by the employment service industry is justified.
The patronising and sometimes almost bullying attitudes of (some , not all) “case managers” towards the trapped victims — off whose misfortune they feed — is justified by their demonstrated inferiority.
And so it was easy for Rudd and the rest of the increasingly hideously Howard-like government to “overlook” the unemployed in their gladhanding stimulation. They’ve got no power, no comeback and no voice.
If anyone needs a boost, it’s the unemployed.
Those who participate in work for the dole activities receive a fortnightly income boost of … $20.80. This is supposed to compensate them for the additional transport costs required by their attendance up to four days a week and any additional costs associated with travelling to interviews up to 90 minutes away. At a maximum of $1.30 each way for a full-time work for the dole participant, you can see how very generous this feels for people who are struggling to both pay rent and eat food in the same week.
If Rudd wants a bit of instant stimulation, if he wants the money he provides to go immediately into the ‘economy’ rather than being saved and hoarded, then if he gives it to the unemployed it won’t even touch the sides.
Kevin is aware of the problem (the electoral problem, anyway) with the punishment of the jobless his massive package means.
“ The Prime Minister said yesterday the next COAG meeting would develop a plan to deal with 300,000 more people who would be out of work by 2010, in a dramatic upward revision of the unemployment figures that means an extra 100,000 people jobless by June.
“At the top of our agenda we’ll be dealing with the whole question of the problem of unemployment, the problem of labour market programs, the proper co-ordination of commonwealth and state labour market programs … in the most seamless and sophisticated way possible,” Mr Rudd said yesterday.
As the Government tries to create 90,000 jobs in labour-intensive industries across the nation – building schools and homes to slow the expected rise in unemployment – the latest economic and fiscal outlook predicts joblessness will surge to 7 per cent in 2009-10, up from 4.5 per cent at present.
So far the Government has provided no additional assistance for those without jobs, promising it will have more to say on labour market programs in coming weeks. Welfare groups are angry that the unemployed received none of the handouts in Tuesday’s stimulus package, and the dole was kept at its current level. Mr Rudd said he and Employment Minister Julia Gillard had been looking at options to help the unemployed but had not made a final decision.
“We’re going through a whole range of options, dealing with kids just coming out of the school system who are going to find it difficult entering the labour market, dealing with the challenge of people who are in jobs who may lose their jobs, the geographical concentration of that, the adequacy of the information flow, and the adequacy of supporting labour market programs for all the above, and the existing social security network as well,” the Prime Minister said.
Yes, Rudd is going to do what he has always done. Develop a plan, have more to say later, look at options, assess information flow, manage programs, make a ‘final decision’ in the fullness of time.
Sounds a lot like Peter Garrett, doesn’t it.
The jobless don’t really care how shiny the solution is. They don’t really care whether or not it’s bureaucratically-acceptably seamless, shiny and ‘sophisticated’. The Rudd government — like many before it, it’s true — is hopelessly out of touch with the reality of human experience. But then, you can’t expect more from a Sirhumphreybot MkII.
The trouble for Uncle Kev is that giving money to the supposedly profligate, the wasteful, the idle, the smelly, the drug-raddled, the diseased, the incompetent, the incontinent – the, you know, unemployed – is not electorally attractive and they won’t suffer too much backlash from the good voters – the, you know, employed. Not until there are so many unemployed and pissed-off voters that they might look like losing an election.
The sleaze of the government, the proof that it is politicking all around this, was shown in the interview, with Albanese we think, where the subject of the disenfranchising of the unemployed from the Big Splurge was brought up. The Minister claimed that the unemployed had not been left out. They would benefit, he said, from the job creation efforts that would flow from increased infrastructure spending. This on a day when unemployment is supposed to be about four and a half percent and is expected to grow to over seven per cent over the next year.
Explain again to us how the unemployed are going to benefit from job creation schemes which will at best only slightly slow the increase in unemployment.
If you imagine that the Turnbull Costello party would be any better, you haven’t been around much, have you.
They are unremittingly awful.
Just awful.
The only thing still in Kevin Rudd’s favour is that he is not them.
Not quite.
Not yet.
The coalition’s only role, as they say, may be to serve as a warning to others.
Heather Ridout wants the unemployed to be trained up in readiness for the boom times that will follow the recession [SORRY – REALLY VERY SORRY. SORRY.]
The unemployed ALREADY get trained all the time. All sorts of programs; for example: how to write an application letter that looks exactly like all the others (and tells exactly the same lies and is full of precisely the same bullshit) to an employer who is considering two hundred other identical applications, and is totally over it. For instance.
Hundreds of thousands of Australians are already being trained for jobs that simply don’t exist and won’t for a long time.
In fact, the boom industry for the next few years is going to be … TRAINING!
Wait!
That’s the magical solution!
An endless loop of the unemployed employed to train each other to train each other.
Get your Cert IV now!
Turnbull is wrong because it is foolhardy to stand between 20 million people and a shitload of money. (Thanks Paul)
Turnbull is wrong because he thinks that there is any debate to be won about whether the pile of money should be shovelled out or not.
Turnbull is wrong because he doesn’t realise that at least 10 million of those Australians have already spent that money in their heads.
He doesn’t understand that they can already see and smell and taste the things they will buy; can already feel the relief from the financial burden they’ve been carrying. They’ve already made their decisions. They’re just waiting for delivery.
Telling them they can’t have it is like brutally waking you from a beautiful dream in which you’ve been expertly stimulated by gorgeous 18-year-old twins who, miraculously, can’t keep their hands and tongues off you.¹ “Isslikadreemcumtroo,” as the Olympians say.
And along comes bloody Turnbull and tips a bucket of ice and water over you and tells you you’re late for work.
He’s not “courageous”; he’s just bloody stupid.
So is Julie Bishop who told Fran this morning that rather than spend all this money right now we should “wait and see” how it pans out.
From what the economic witchdoctors are telling us, that’s like being in a rubber ducky rushing towards a waterfall and saying,
“Yes, I know it looks like foam spray and it does sound like billions of gallons of water thundering over a huge precipice but I think we should save our energy and not start rowing until we are close enough to look over and confirm that it is a waterfall.”
One of the opposition’s own made the most cogent point so far, early this morning, when he pointed out that it may be that Rudd has engineered the elements of the stimulus package to mask the signs of a recession. It will look like a recession, waddle like a recession, and quack like a recession but it won’t BE a recession. Statistically.
(Meanwhile, apparently Peter Costello has decided that he would like another go at not becoming Prime Minister.)
¹No personal offence intended. We just picked on some fantasy we saw on TV last night which seemed to be a Work for the Dole project for some of the more photogenic unemployed Hollywood starlets. Please adjust to suit your personal preferences.
Today was a dual anniversary – the 221st anniversary of the birth of (European) Australia and the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robbie Burns.
The two are related. Burns was a fierce advocate of Enlightenment principles and the fight for the rights of citizens against the arrogated and entrenched power of aristocracy, royalty and privilege. The result of the fight of which he was a part is the democracy which we enjoy here in Australia and in all other liberal democracies.
If we want to keep our freedoms and our rights we need to remember how very recently that fight was fought and how many try to subvert them and take ownership of them and even simply fail to understand them – most recently, in this country, various members and operatives of the Howard government (Ruddock, Andrews, Keelty for instance) and even of the NSW Iemma government; in the US, Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez, Ashcroft, Card. The appalling Yoo of course.
As we mentioned in a previous post,
“ Burns himself could have been transported to Botany Bay, as fellow Scots Thomas Muir, Thomas Palmer and William Skirving were in 1794.
Muir escaped in 1796 on an American ship which had been sent to rescue him. He fled to France, still in the midst of its Revolution. America had only recently won its own independence from Britain.
In France Muir worked with the famous Thomas Paine who had agitated for American Independence. Paine famously wrote “Common Sense” and “The Rights of Man – a guide to the ideas of the Enlightenment”.
(Muir had been a student of John Millar, Scottish philosopher and historian and author of “The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks; or, An Inquiry into the Circumstances which give rise to Influence and Authority in the Different Members of Society [1771]¹). ”
According to Wikipedia,
“ The Scottish Enlightenment was … characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments…
Sharing the humanist and rationalist outlook of the European Enlightenment of the same time period, the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment asserted the fundamental importance of human reason combined with a rejection of any authority which could not be justified by reason…The Scottish Enlightenment had effects far beyond Scotland itself, not only because of the esteem in which Scottish achievements were held in Europe and elsewhere, but also because its ideas and attitudes were carried across the Atlantic as part of the Scottish diaspora which had its beginnings in that same era.
Here is the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.
2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.
4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.
5. Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do anything not provided for by law.
6. Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has a right to participate personally, or through his representative, in its foundation. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally eligible to all dignities and to all public positions and occupations, according to their abilities, and without distinction except that of their virtues and talents
7. No person shall be accused, arrested, or imprisoned except in the cases and according to the forms prescribed by law. Any one soliciting, transmitting, executing, or causing to be executed, any arbitrary order, shall be punished. But any citizen summoned or arrested in virtue of the law shall submit without delay, as resistance constitutes an offense.
8. The law shall provide for such punishments only as are strictly and obviously necessary, and no one shall suffer punishment except it be legally inflicted in virtue of a law passed and promulgated before the commission of the offense.
9. As all persons are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty, if arrest shall be deemed indispensable, all harshness not essential to the securing of the prisoner’s person shall be severely repressed by law.
10. No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.
11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.
12. The security of the rights of man and of the citizen requires public military forces. These forces are, therefore, established for the good of all and not for the personal advantage of those to whom they shall be intrusted.
13. A common contribution is essential for the maintenance of the public forces and for the cost of administration. This should be equitably distributed among all the citizens in proportion to their means.
14. All the citizens have a right to decide, either personally or by their representatives, as to the necessity of the public contribution; to grant this freely; to know to what uses it is put; and to fix the proportion, the mode of assessment and of collection and the duration of the taxes.
15. Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration.
16. A society in which the observance of the law is not assured, nor the separation of powers defined, has no constitution at all.
17. Since property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one shall be deprived thereof except where public necessity, legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and then only on condition that the owner shall have been previously and equitably indemnified.
Not a bad start.
Robbie Burns put it in a nutshell:
To crouch in the train of mere stupid wealth and greatness . . .
I hold to be prostitution in anyone that is not born a slave.
Happy Birthday Robbie. (And colonial Australia)
Really. We just want to acknowledge ourselves privately but publicly (it makes sense to us, anyway). It’s not meant to be onanistically self-congratulatory, except in the sense that we have achieved some things and we want to record them.
So this is a stocktake for posterity, if you like, that marks a moment, a milestone.
Yes, ValuesAustralia is two years old. This is our 712th post. Singlehanded, eh, Clubtroppo, Larvatus Prodeo, RoadtoSurfdom etc. etc.? That’s almost one a day. (There used to be a billboard for One A Day vitamin pills at the corner of Victoria Rd and Rowntree Street at Blackwattle Bay in Sydney. There was a picture of a man and a woman. The woman was saying, “I’m Jenny and I give John One A Day.” Soon a graffiti artist had added, “I’m John and I’m fucked!”)
And, yes, we’re just about fucked, ourselves. We’ve got a rotator cuff from all the typing and mouse clicking, especially during October and November last year.
(We went to the radiologist. “What seems to be the problem?” “I’ve got a sore shoulder.” “Hmm…we’ll do an ultrasound and an x-ray…… Hmm…. Hmmmmmm, our expert analysis of the ultrasound and x-ray indicates you have a sore shoulder. You’ll have to stop using it for a while.” “Thanks….What?)
We’ve never paid for any advertising. We’ve never submitted ValuesAustralia to any search engine. Nevertheless, we got ourselves listed on Google within 24 hours of launching the site. We tried to register the site with dmoz.org (The Open Source Directory) – as you do – but it wasn’t taking orders, and by the time it came back on line months later, ValuesAustralia was already magically listed!
We’ve been #1 for “Australian Values” on Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask most of the time for more than a year and a half. We’re #12 for “values” on Google worldwide, out of 314,000,000 results and on google.com.au we’re #2 for “values” out of 307,000,000. We’re #1 on google worldwide and Australia for “Australian political values” out of about 400,000 results.
Our Google Page Rank is 4 (used to be 5 but they changed the algorithm) which is respectable but we’d prefer a 5 or a 6.
We’ve had over 300,000 aggregate visitors and more than 75,000 spam messages (thank you, Akismet).
Earlier this year we were consistently getting more than 1000 visitors a day – over 30,000 a month, which is okay, although nothing like the big guys.
We’ve made friends all over the world and especially in Australia. We are in the top 1% of websites worldwide. We are popular in Saudi Arabia – amongst the top 42,000 favourite sites for Saudis. (That worries us just a bit…Say hullo to Al for us…) We appreciate our readers and those who choose to comment from time to time. We thought a scarcity of comments was a Bad Thing, a Failure, but we noticed that one of the most popular, most entertaining bloggers we know of, Whatever It Is, I’m Against It, doesn’t get heaps, either – a few, but not tens like Possum or hundreds and thousands like William the PollBludger.
In May 2007 ValuesAustralia was picked up by the “Stay In Touch” column at the Sydney Morning Herald, accusing us of “rhetoric”.
One of Sir Roger’s posts was selected by ClubTroppo and On Line Opinion in January 2008 as one of the top 40 posts in Australia for 2007. We’re very proud of that.
But it’s a post we made early in 2007 that we are still most proud of. Ken Parish at ClubTroppo called it
“quite possibly the best piece of passionate, angry polemic I’ve ever read, certainly on a blog. ‘Roger Migently’ is roused to extraordinary heights of eloquence… ”
Yes, Troppo has been good to us and we mourn the passing of Missing Link and Ken’s prolonged work-induced(?) absence. We were also congratulated by Richard Neville (HomePageDaily) and Steven Poole whose Unspeak blog is our benchmark for economy, clarity, style and wit.
We have enjoyed the journey so far and we have no intention at this stage of stopping, although we have slowed down (work, you know).
Bobbo the Clown
Our favourite person in the world, of course, is the clown, Bob Correll (above), Deputy Secretary of DIC, OPM, because he wrote us the letter which inspired our outburst. As we discovered he was (and appears still to be) the person who had taken over departmental responsibility for “Borders, Compliance, Detention and Technology”, or in other words, perhaps, for keeping innocent kiddies locked up in the desert, deporting Australian citizens, supporting the failed state of Nauru, making the lives of genuine refugees a misery, doing it to please the Minister, and all at the touch of a computer key. Previously he had been the driving force behind developing and implementing Job Network, or “how to design exquisite, personalised punishment for people who are already struggling with the stress of being unemployed”. Godluvvya, Bob! How’s the Volvo? How’s the kids? How do you sleep at night?
One of the most satisfying things is how we always beat the Immigration Department on Google.
Our second favourite person is Mick Keelty, just for being such a hopeless buffoon and continually making appalling stuff-ups for us to make fun of. G’bye, Mick.
Anyway, just for the record.
(And a special “hi!” to Lang!)