A trade we need everywhere if it’s not come yet

Tonight, as I wait for a reprint 1910 Wisden to see if it ends, I have found an article that recalls my earliest days at Raleigh Street in a very nasty manner - and shows what has to be done.

Circa 1990 at Raleigh Street, a fellow student of mine (if I recall well several) said to me that they had a real gun when playing with a toy gun like those shown above. Although one might imagine the story to be a joke, this always taught me to fear the possibility kids would acquire a real gun and use it to shoot me. When kids said as I reached adulthood “I’ll (expletive) kill you” and “I’m gonna shoot you, (expletive)” I stood in great fear believing that many kids wanted me dead.

Although with age I can admit that it was my errant behaviour rather than hating me personally that caused kids to tease me so much, that does not mean I believe teasing as I suffered can be justified.

In this context, a trade by Strobridge Elementary School of books and bikes for kids’ existing toy guns is most refreshing and original. Each child will get a book in exchange and enter a raffle to win a bicycle. The idea actually came from a photographer called Horace Gibson, who takes students’ school pictures and expressed concern about a spate of shootings of young people by police in Oakland. Police, Horace Gibson says, often mistake toy guns for a real gun, despite the special colourings in the picture at the top.

It would be great if toy guns were replaced in this way at all schools in Australia, at least if schools are willing to do more than my school was about children acquiring toy guns which could give them a taste for real guns without understanding of when and how real guns can be used safely. I have never read about the effect of toy guns on whether kids become bullies or something much worse (like killers) but unless it can be shown that toy guns really help kids avoid violence with real guns (very unlikely I imagine) i would never let a child in my care have a toy gun!

A strange joke about the Eucharist

Today, my brother gave me this interesting anecdote:

1394: A court in Orne, France, sentences a pig to death for blasphemy - after it wandered into an open church and fed on the Holy Wafers.

This may have been understandable since, especially under the doctrine that humans are not animals - which is argued by opponents of Communism to prevent the extreme violence of all Stalinist regimes - the Eucharist is so sacred that allowing it to be consumed by animals is desecration.

Nonetheless, it is still funny that a pig would be sentenced to death, rather than maintained because it ate the Eucharistic Wafers!

Is Australia surprising?

This recent table, aiming to show how religiosity (based on “confidence” in religious institutions) aims to show that religiosity is inversely correlated with suicide rates.

The table is interesting in the context of the “atheist nation with a religious ruling class” image I have developed for twentieth-century Europe, actually suggesting this image to be true almost exclusively of Spain. In fact, the suicide rates of some other nations where I have suspected very low real religiosity are lower than those for Australia and religosity higher.

There is reason to question even “founder effects” as the cause for Australia’s low religiosity since its suicide rate of countries adjacent to Australia - which if “founder effects” were really making Australia less religious than it should be in simple environmental and economic grounds would be higher than Australia - are not actually so. There are a few exceptions in South Korea and two ex-Stalinist nations, but in fact one would expect such exceptions to be in “small-government” countries if my own theories are true.

This is serious reading for me, I think!

The “cheap and nasty” land gets nastier

Although it is annoying to have to cycle from Mentone station to reach Name A Game, I must say that I actually enjoy it because it provides very good exercise for my obese body, and in the pleasant winter weather of southern Australia it is not a tough ride even when one rides on the footpath in fear of fast cars and my bicycle’s soft tyres.

Today, I went very early because of the need to have a meal ready for Mummy, who is also busy. Despite problems with the stand on my bicycle, I had no trouble on a surprisingly empty train to Frankston, nor in cycling to Braeside despite the threatening weather, which remains threatening as I contemplate my future options.

When I carried on the familiar routine of calling to talk to Christian (who is now insistent that I do not come into his workshop) he said that the West Coast v North Melbourne game from the sixteenth round of 2000 I had expected two weeks ago (and which I had ordered on 25 March) had already been re-sent. I tried to talk about the problem of what would happen if this second parcel is lost - which I already knew to be a very probable outcome given the bad and declining quality of Australia’s mail services - but I failed to get Christian and thought it better to go home than to call him up in person a second time.

The trip back to Mordialloc station was smooth, but when I put my bike on the train I had no choice but to use the lock since the stand was not holding it - I have meant to ask about repairs or replacement for the stand for some time - yet the lock held it much better and with less obstruction to fellow passengers than I hoped. Once I was back at Flinders Street I rang Christian and he did say the West Coast v North Melbourne game would be re-copied again if it were lost in the post a second time, then after considering my options I though I had enough time to check my mailbox. This is where the trouble began. With a decent mail service every solitary parcel within a metropolitan area would come in a straight day with absolutely ZERO RISK, so that I unfortunately assumed my game would be waiting for my hot little hands. When it was not, I became sulky, asking suggestively the post office people who said there was nothing, then going outside and calling Mummy to tell her another parcel had been lost.

It was then that I went hysterical as I am wont to do when I have waited and waited to no avail. I know that, contrary to what the post office people and my mother say, the probability the parcel will come is zero: it was lost no doubt due to inadequate checking by the postal service. This poor checking no doubt results from inadequate staffing to prevent errors in the electronic mail checking - or perhaps even faults therein.

What this really shows to me is how Australia’s comfortable, relatively affluent working class, with its vast actual and potential housing space, abundant economic opportunities and low energy costs tolerates much poorer qualities than almost any other working class in the world. They have negligible demand for specialised, high-quality goods, and very little individuality of any sort in their quiet, low-density suburbs, resulting in probably a low use of mail services compared to the Enriched or Tropical Worlds. The low tax rates of Australia mean inadequate regulation of so many things - not only the environment, but even less critical things like mail checking. Because people falsely assume Australia to be a “developed” country, tracking is not made compulsory as it is often to other countries known to have high mail loss rates.

Reading:

… reserves the right to refuse shipping to countries with a high mail loss rate and to suspect buyers.

if they knew about my experience, I can imagine may eBay and amazon.com sellers would refuse to sell to Australia and I would have to have them posted to my brother! That would be painful but possibly more reliable since a relative will have some serious interest in motives other than profit from the unwary.

A forgotten lesson from Ford closure

The news that Ford would close its Australian car manufacturing plants in 2016 was a shock to me, but one I have been very well prepared for over the past few years.

It is long forgotten by almost everbody else who discussing the issue, but Ford’s headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan was planning to close car manufacture in Australia twenty years ago until the Federal Government offered aid in terms of devaluing (even undervaluing) the Aussie dollar and direct financial help – as well as eliminating indexation of fuel excise to help thirsty local cars and imported 4x4s.

In 1993 I was quietly worried about Ford closing its doors after the highly publicised Nissan closure of 1992, but with hindsight I recognise that the government ought to focus research in a very different direction. Given Australia’s extremely fragile ecology it requires a much more (not less) energy-efficient transport sector than the Enriched World. This would necessarily require transportation to be focused on mass surface transit both in urban and rural areas – that is, on railways.

It is interesting to me to consider whether an Australia without a car industry would have a less powerful road lobby, but I do not believe that so because the parent companies of importers know how much more sympathetic Australia is to wastage of money on roads, so car companies know well where to focus their energies.

What people do not realise is that, rather than focus on car transport, Australia needs to see whether a mass transit vehicle industry – even if supported by something like the old 57.5 percent tariff on cars – could develop the same sorts of skills as a car industry, an idea neglected by Remy Davison.