Journal Entries
My Cup runneth not over
Posted Nov 1, 2011
Today was the first Tuesday in November, a significant date in the calendar of a great democracy. Yes, that's right, it was Cup day! 
The Melbourne Cup has been run every year since 1861, it's the highlight of the Spring racing carnival, and it stops Australia in its tracks. I remember about 20 years ago, when I was a poverty-stricken student making some money on the side, leaving the restaurant where I was a kitchenhand just after 2:30pm on Cup day and walking out into a completely deserted street. This was Hindley St, Adelaide's 24-hour party street with 24-hour pubs and cafes, and there was nobody else on the street. Nobody at all. An old newspaper blew past... It was eerily post-apocalyptic. Everyone was watching the race.
Nothing's really changed, except that I now live in Canberra and have an office job. The country still stops to watch a 2-mile horse race at 3:10pm (Australian Eastern Summer time). If ever anybody wants to invade, the first Tuesday in November is probably a good day to choose.
At lunchtime the first happy drunks started appearing in the streets. By 2pm nobody was even pretending to do anything constructive. By 2:30pm we were all clustered around TV screens eating little gourmet thingummies and drinking beer or wine according to preference. People had dressed up to give a sense of occasion, and some of the hats in the office were startling.
And then - the race! I don't usually give a stuff about the race itself, but this one was amazing. Photo-finish for first, second and third places! A French horse called Dunaden, owned by a Qatari sheikh, won by about a nostril-hair. The actual photo is remarkable. News coverage here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-01/dunaden-wins-2011-melbourne-cup/3613146
I lost about $16 on various sweeps - this is the one day of the year when I go in for this sort of thing. National tradition, and all that. I didn't place any outside bets, so none of the betting slips that litter the city streets are mine.
So - a nice day, a slightly frivolous tradition, good food and drinking in the office. 
It's all good fun, and it's the unofficial opening of the Summer silly season here.
But I do still wonder what's in it for the horse.
Ivan.
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Latest reply: Nov 1, 2011
It must be Monday.
Posted Oct 31, 2011
This journal is all about nothing. I'm feeling flat and aimless and ever so jaded. It's a classic Monday, in fact. Nothing bad happened, nothing especially good happened, nothing at all happened that I'm aware of, but that doesn't signify much as I'm often unaware of things. Monday. 
Even worse, it must be Tuesday tomorrow. There's nothing I can do about it. Of all the meetings I attend every week, it's the ones on Tuesday that are the most meaningless and irelevant. But the Tuesday that will happen tomorrow is different to all the others that have happened this year - but I'll say something about that tomorrow.
I've just realised why I don't write cliffhanger endings. They require effort, which is something I can't manage on a Monday.
At this point I'll just add a link to A87709062 and suggest you have a look if you haven't already. Better still, join in the fun of writing a journal a day for an entire month.
Go on. You know you want to.
Ivan.
Discuss this Journal entry [12]
Latest reply: Oct 31, 2011
Transports of delight? Nope.
Posted Oct 26, 2011
I thought of giving myself a night off writing journal entries, but... nah. It's awfully compelling once one gets started.
I'm not really here. I'm about to head off in the general direction of a public meeting about the perfectly hilarious public transport system in my part of town, to see what's being planned and to see if I can point out silly plans before they become silly reality. I have no other form of transport except the local buses, so I have a clear need to be part of the discussion.
Public transport in Canberra is hopelessly inefficient because of the layout of the city. It's a sprawling cluster of 'town centres' separated by 'green' (but more usually brown and inflammable) areas of bushland and parkland and horse agistment paddocks. We have 350,000 people shoehorned into an area the size of Greater London. With this population density of course the buses will be slow and under-utilised. Let's see what bright ideas the Territory government has. I'm particularly hoping for improved weekend services.
The main implication for me, apart from possible transport hell, is that this all means I'm sliding into bourgeois middle age. I used to go to anti-war rallies and gay rights rallies and aboriginal land rights rallies and better HIV treatments rallies and anti-racism rallies, but now I'm concerned about public transport and attending a meeting convened by local ratepayers in my capacity as a local ratepayer. Goodness, how middle-class I've become. Hmpf.Ivan.
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Latest reply: Oct 26, 2011
Paradise? No, not paradise, but it's not completely awful either.
Posted Oct 25, 2011
In my last journal I commented that Australia, for all that it's in a good socioeconomic position right now, is not paradise. This is where I expand on this statement.
As a rule, one lists all the things that are wrong with a place and then tries to put a positive gloss on the situation by listing some good things. I've gone about this the wrong way and might even depress myself slightly once I've slagged off my country a bit. Let's see. But here's a non-exhaustive list of things that are wrong, each of which could make for a grim journal entry of its own:
1. Indigenous issues
I'm tempted to describe this as 'post-colonial mess', which is more or less what it starts out as, but that would be to deny that independent sovereign Australia has stuffed some things up all by itself. Aboriginal people in Australia have a significantly lower life expectancy than the rest of us; they have poorer health outcomes, higher rates of malnutrition, higher rates of kidney disease, heart disease, diabetes and glaucoma; they have exponentially higher rates of imprisonment, poor educational results and appallingly high levels of alcoholism and domestic violence. And that's just for starters.
Some of these issues stem from colonial policies that weren't changed for decades after Federation and the establishment of a national government.
Efforts are being made to change things but progress seems infinitely slow. Then there's the ethical issues. We're trying to avoid paternalism, but some current policies positively reek of paternalism. Those of us who care spend so much time trying to be sensitive and empowering that nothing gets done. It's a mess, and it will be decades before we really get anywhere. This is so bloody depressing.
2. Decaying infrastructure
The last Federal government was a bunch of idiots. They never could see the need to spend money on infrastructure - roads, ports, railways in particular. (The big airports are privately owned.) Now we have slightly more sensible and less penny-pinching people in power, the job is bigger than it would have been if maintenance had been undertaken earlier.
3. Access to healthcare
It's all very well having socialised medicine that is affordable for everyone and free for the most disadvantaged, but if there's a shortage of doctors the system fails. There is a shortage at the moment. Then there's issues of distance, with most advanced medical facilities being in the capital cities. Some people have to travel up to 1000 kilometres to get the treatment they need.
4. Education funding
For some barking mad reason, the government funds private schools. Why? The government school system needs the money; private schools for the children of wealthy people do not. This is a particular irritant for me, remembering the poor resources at my government school.
5. Constitutional issues
I've already said my piece about the monarchy, and the fact that it's a perfectly ridiculous system of government for this country.
6. Political idiocy
We have a very uninspiring bunch of politicians at the moment, with two major parties that are missing the point on just about everything that matters. I probably don't have to expand on this too much for those of you who are in the UK, the US, or indeed anywhere else. Everything's cut down to 20-second soundbites and idiotic slogans and catchphrases. Is this debate? Nope. Are we well-served? Hell no.
There were other things I could have gone on about, but it *is* depressing writing this stuff. But it is an interesting exercise, examining the national entrails. After all, to fix problems we first have to acknowledge them and look at them in cold blood.
This is the seventh journal entry in my week of a-journal-a-day. 
It's proven to be very easy, once I've picked on a topic. That's good to know, seeing as the month of daily journals looms... I might give myself a day off tomorrow, unless I have something to say. But I usually do have something to say, it seems. Ivan.
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Latest reply: Oct 25, 2011
In which Ivan's mind is occupied
Posted Oct 24, 2011
I've stayed out of the various 'Occupy' threads so far, for one reason or another - including the inability to work out what I thought about it all. You see, while I can see what Occupy Wall Street is about, and in fact I think something of the sort is decades overdue, things are different here so the Occupy movement has manifested differently here.
Let's start with a compare-and-contrast. The USA has an economy that's broken, a dreadful unemployment rate, an inequitable distribution of wealth, an inequitable healthcare system and a questionable approach to labour issues and social welfare. Australia, while not paradise (and I'll probably do a separate journal about our main problems), has a sound economy, unemployment somewhere around 5%, a fairer though imperfect distribution of wealth, a reasonable socialised healthcare system, a consensus approach to industrial relations and a social welfare system that is light years ahead of the US version. (I worked in social welfare here for 13 years, so this is my special subject. The US system is brutal compared to the system in any other industrialised country.) I can also add that our banking system is well-regulated, our government debt is under control and we haven't been in recession since 1992. This is what all that evil socialism causes. 
So you see, a direct copy of the Occupy movement wasn't going to capture the public mood here. The keynote issues of the US/UK Occupy movements are issues here, but they're not the central issues in the public consciousness. What we had instead was the Occupation of Martin Place in Sydney by about 80-100 people, City Square in Melbourne by about the same number, and apparently there are about three people somewhere among the trees in central Canberra.
There has been no central narrative in the local Occupations, and consequently they've been regarded as little more than an oddity by the mainstream press and they've been largely overlooked by everyone else. The various individual issues they raised were worth raising, but every single one of them was lost among the crowd of other issues. The protests were peaceful, but to the casual observer - as represented by the saner bits of the mainstream media - they were manifestations of student radicalism and not much else.
I am ashamed to say that the Melbourne and Sydney Occupations were ended by the police over the last couple of days. This was completely and utterly unnecessary, but the state governments of Victoria and New South Wales (right-wing governments) thought differently. Precisely why they thought this is unclear but I suspect there might be an element of political chicanery. The federal government is sort-of left-wing and there's any amount of friction between the two levels of government at the moment.
The Deputy Prime Minister has said that he didn't agree with the police interventions, and that the protesters had raised many issues that needed public discussion and action - issues around social inequality and social welfare in Australia. The fact that he's said this is a positive thing. I think he's sincere, too. Whether anything will happen as a direct result of Occupy is, however, doubtful. Some of the issues are already on the government's agenda but with a hung parliament there's no guarantee that action is possible.
After all this - what do I think? Well, I do prefer my protest movements to have a central narrative, but I could see where the local Occupy people were coming from, and good on 'em too. What we need now is for the movement to pick a few issues and run with them. Talking about everything at once just leads to white noise, especially in a media environment dominated by Rupert. (Some cities here, cities with more than a million people, have no newspaper that isn't controlled by Rupert.) If the Occupy movement here can *focus*, and no doubt they can pick a few priority issues through a democratic process, I think they can become a strong voice exposing inequality and injustice. We need something like that.
I'm fully aware that this is simplistic. Frankly I'm tired of typing. By all means, dissect what I've written and challenge me on it. #OccupyIvan'sJournalIvan.
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Latest reply: Oct 24, 2011
Ivan the Terribly Average
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