Gambling on our future

Doing the right thing by problem gamblers? Don't bet on it. 

Unless you have been locked in a shed for the past few months, you can't have failed to notice the avalanche of propaganda on our television screens in support of the gambling industry. Andrew Wilkie, the abrasive independent member for somewhere in Tasmania, has made it a condition of his support for the Gillard minority government that it enacts laws designed to help problem gamblers, mainly those who piss billions of dollars a year down the necks of the ubiquitous poker machines.

It is a hideous industry that preys on vulnerable people and Hoopla has already run a first-hand account of the damage this is doing to the community. Only recently any hope of bipartisanship on this was destroyed when Tony Abbott unleashed his wrecking ball promising that if he got to government, he would wind back anything that would get in the way of clubs and pubs exploiting problem gamblers http://bit.ly/se1wbe. His partner in this, shock jock Alan Jones, told ABC AM: "Pre-commitment gambling will erode the fabric of Australian life

But as this blog here shows, the nonsense being sprouted about the damage to the community in pre-commitment is twaddle. Just 2.5 per cent of the money they make out of gambling goes back to the community.

A little point I came across while reading up on this is that the take rate of our pokies is the highest in the world and most countries won’t have a bar of what they call “Australian machines”. Reverend Tim Costello said recently: “Australia has the highest number of poker machines per head in the world. There are 197,000 of them nationally and around half are in NSW. We’re not talking about the one-arm bandits of old that took 20 cent pieces. It’s possible to feed $12,000 an hour into modern high intensity machines. The machines are designed to increase playing time and addiction. “

May I add a couple more articles to your reading list to bring you up to speed on what is occurring out there in clubs and pubs?

What are you looking at?

I'm getting sick of being treated as an aging paedophile. I'm tired of being viewed with suspicion whenever I talk to someone’s kids. I am tired of having to think carefully before I tell people about  my attitude to kids. In a society obsessed with child abuse,  I am know I am not the problem.  Am I overreacting? Perhaps.  In the supermarket queue the other day, the woman in front had her stroller turned around so the child, a young boy or girl - not sure which - was facing me. I began chatting to the child, pulling a few faces, doing my acclaimed Donald Duck impersonation and getting a grin out of the kid. The mother turned round, glared at me and quickly turned the stroller away. Made me feel grubby.
Recently I found a child, obviously lost, in the shopping centre and stood nearby just keeping an eye out. When the parents arrived, wild-eyed and frantic, I attempted to engage in a reassuring chat to say the kid was not harmed but suddenly felt I was being viewed as somehow involved in the child's absence. Down at the beach on the weekend, when the kids line up for Nippers - or Nipples, as my daughter thought it was called - people taking photographs of their kids are viewed with some concern. A non-parent is ostracised.
For me, it looks like the slippery slope towards the sort of thinking that brings us organisations like the Taliban. We really need to sort out what is going on and be a little less censorious. Look at the statistics. The catch-cry of Stranger Danger is misleading. The stats show that most child abuse occurs in the home and the offender is known to the victim. Acts by random strangers are rare, although when they occur they are horrendous.
But does it help to make your child scared rigid of strangers? Does it help if parents are so paranoid they turn strollers around in supermarkets? What happens if they do get into trouble and could be helped if they approached a stranger? From my experience, most people in the world are good people and who hasn't been blown away by the random kindness of strangers? There is a climate of hostility directed at old blokes like me who just like interacting with kids passing by. They make me laugh.
I love going each year to The Australian Ballet's pre-Christmas offering. We choose the matinee because, and this is where it gets difficult, I love watching the little girls in the audience. They arrive with their mothers in tow. It is pretty obvious they attend ballet school. They have spent many hours preparing their hair and clothes. They stand in second position and are in thrall of the occasion. Occasionally you catch their faces while the ballet is on and the concentration and adoration is wonderful. During interval, they practise the dance steps and movements they’ve seen on stage. 

It is a chance to look through a window into the innocence and wonder of young people untroubled by the crap we have going around in our heads. It is a magical experience for them and it appeals to me because I love seeing something that I love being appreciated by others.
I felt the same with one of my sons when he played sport. It was before he became a teenager. He and his mates had approached the game with passion and seriousness, even though they were all technically pretty hopeless.
Now I don't know why I am telling you this. It feels funny to say these days. I had to think a long time before I wrote this. I had only told a few people about the enjoyment of the ballet and the enjoyment of watching the kids in the audience. I expect an intervention from Hetty Johnston at Bravehearts any moment.
It's not people like me we should be worrying about. Rather, it is the corporatisation of our children.
When I was a kid, we were allowed to be kids. No one marketed stuff at us. There was an understanding that parents were marketed to and they decided what their kids would have. Now that bond is broken and, like the omelette, is never going to be turned back into an egg.
But we have to understand and push back against the pernicious marketing that goes on and the sneaky sexualisation of our children. In the same shopping centres where I am viewed with suspicion, I am surrounded by posters for children’s clothing. The models have been made to look older than they are. They strike poses that are not the poses of children. It is all about rushing children through childhood into consumerist nirvana. So pre-pubescent girls are encouraged to buy training bras and high heels.
On pay television at the moment is a show called Toddlers and Tiaras, an American excrescence featuring beauty contests for mostly little girls but which is now attracting young boys as well. Of course corporate sponsorship dollars back the program.
The organisers made a foray into Australia recently.

Welcome to the asylum

Not so long ago, young people used to have a rite of passage known as their 21st where

parents held a big party and at some time during the evening, before the keg had been drunk

dry and the flower beds decorated in carrots, the centre of attention was given the key of the

door.

As people gazed at some large boofy bloke and grainy old pictures of a naked toddler

crawling into the surf or suchlike, the proud parents spoke of the responsibility that came

with having your own front door key. Part of that responsibility was that you had to act like

an adult in all things. Quaint, eh?

As L.P. Hartley wrote, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

It's a bit like becoming the government of a country. The old days of wild-eyed idealism

in opposition are over. The hard grind of office brings with it perks, but it also brings an

obligation to act responsibly.

The refugee debate has become a race to the bottom of a cesspit that has no bottom. The

rednecks of talkback radio and their call-in gibberers will not be satisfied until they see

people being shot in the water. They are beyond any normal decency and should be treated

as such. Instead, we are seeing them shaping the debate and all semblance of responsible

government thrown under the bus.

What seems to be forgotten here is that we are bludgers. We are sponging off the rest of

the world. Offshore processing means we are willing to abrogate our responsibilities under

refugee conventions and throw our problems into someone else’s backyard like bags of

smelly garbage.

Let us remind ourselves of the millions of refugees moving around the world, desperate

for sanctuary as war, famine and terror breathe down their necks.
In 35 years, 500 boats

bringing a total of 27,000 people have arrived in this country. Let us remind ourselves of

the 40,000 asylum seekers Greece is processing at the moment.

Australia, stop whinging and grow up*

After suffering through an unusually tough, wet winter, don't you just love turning up to dinner and

getting stuck next to the suntanned bore who has been in some warm spot north of the Equator?

“Blah blah blah we were so hot blah blah blah you could always find a quiet beach. Blah blah blah

everything was so cheap blah blah blah check out this wallet − it's made of cork." Fancy.

I realised the other day I have become one of those blow-ins from the north. A house swap in Spain

and another in Portugal, plus an indulgent month in Greece where we actually had to pay for our

accommodation (you know, if you get away from Athens it is really cheap blah blah blah – oops,

sorry) has made me someone to avoid, at least until my tan fades.

The only thing is, don't ask if I am glad to be back.

I have tried to keep a low profile regarding the state of the nation but, when I turn on the radio

or pick up a paper, I wonder why it won't leave me alone. The media noise in this country, the

pessimism, the shrieking ignorance of talkback, the witlessness of truckies with too much time

on their hands, radio announcers proclaiming it would be a good idea to murder the PM. The

doomsaying of our media, egged on by Tony Abbott, an empty suit good for only three-word

slogans. It is relentless. Fair dinkum when will this country ever grow up?

It's like arriving back to a giant creche full of self-entitled dummy spitters.

Lovin that Mummy Culture

 A little letter from an exasperated Bear to The Wentworth Courier.....

 A number of years ago I used to go out cycling early in the morning, often leaving home at 5.30. I would pass a young women dressed smartly in an Australian army uniform. Holding her hand was a little girl, also neatly turned out complete with pink back pack. One was on her way to work, the other to be dropped off somewhere possibly a relative. I used to wonder about that woman's life. I supposed she was a single mum doing the best for her beloved little person. She had long hours and experienced that anxiety as she rushed to pick her up at the end of the day scared she might be late. Then the meals, the bedtime and next day it starts all over again. It's a scene repeated all over Sydney where people, often with two jobs, push out into the dark with their kids in tow. 

They rely on network of friends relatives and occasional day care. Not too much because it is hideously expensive. I thought of them as I saw your story on page three about Libby Gore and her new book on being a mum. “Oooh such an exciting experience, I'll write a book about it and get my bonce in a newspaper that circulates in the most privileged, pampered and self entitled area of Australia.

“We are just all so important having children that everyone has to read about it”. I can read it and find out North Bondi has a great mummy culture which just means little coffee klatches of self indulgent, self entitlement. A place for $1500 strollers, massive four wheel drive chariots and kids in their designer nappies. It's sickening. Most of us just got on with being the best parents we could be. A lot of us did it much easier than others, like the Army mum, who work their bums off and at night fall exhausted into bed . They don't have time to write books. It's a pity Gore did . 

The party's over but the maladies linger on

I hope you’re all feeling very proud of yourselves. It was a great party last Saturday. We all poured over to Kristina’s and trashed the joint, gave a few old no-hopers a kicking, drank all the beer and then pushed off. Whoever had the idea of putting the address up on Facebook should be given a bloody medal.

What a hoot, I nearly wet myself. Little Antony Green’s home computer shat itself halfway through the night, claiming it had never seen such big swings and something was obviously wrong. Ant had to go home early to have a lie down. Wimp.

Any of you go back next day to help Kristina and Ben put out the empties? I thought so. I couldn’t get there; I had to sort my sock drawer.

Joe and Kristina in happier times. PS: That's Verity looking like
 she wants to be somewhere else. 

And I suppose it wasn’t surprising, as I seem to remember that around 10.30 Kristina got up and said she was chucking it all in, leaving the party in the hands of that malevolent old bald bloke in the corner. Geez, wasn’t he a bore? Banging on about how he had been the bloke behind the ACTU’s Work Choices campaign. Funny, even through the haze I couldn’t recall him being other than a bit player. I thought Greggy Combet and Shaz Burrows made the running on that one. Memory, such a funny thing.

Speaking of Greggy … geez, for a bloke with glasses and a never-ending line of dag clothing off the Lowes bargain table, doesn’t he pull the chicks? I mean, his main topic of conversation is about Gouldian finches (be still, my beating heart) and still they hang on every word. Women are funny sometimes. But I digress.

Anyway, the old bald bloke went on about how he opposed electricity privatisation, then got himself into parliament and ratted on the deal and then seemed to support some sort of power privatisation. Then, just because he could, he shafted Morrie Iemma and we got Nate, that ranga who was always ready to give it a “red-hot go”. In the end, he just went.

Not the underpants dancer from the ALP South Coast but you get my drift. 

Then we got Miss America who said she was nobody’s girl. Geez, we laughed at that, cos she had already done the godfathers a few favours while planning minister.

John Stewart sums up the post below

I write 1500 words and John Stewart does it in a few minutes http://goo.gl/9HayW

The whine of the middle-class welfare bludgers

Your taxes at work. A lovely" Independent school"
 happily slurping at the public trough. 

I was going to have a whinge this week about the rise of pram parking bays at my local Westfield. They now outnumber the handicapped parking bays by a ratio of about 10 to one. There are big pictures of strollers stencilled in red on the ground and a solemn sign reading “parents with prams” hangs from the roof. These signs have no legal backing, so please please everyone park in them, if only to piss off the smug Bugaboo pushers making their way through our shopping centres.
Some of those Bugaboos cost more than a second-hand car and are so big I think people should be charged a fee if they want to infest a public area with them. We did quite happily with the old Maclaren. You know, the one that told you when you had done too much shopping by flipping backwards, leaving the strapped in inmate staring at the shopping centre ceiling lights. It was very funny and it sure stopped the little tacker’s wailing lament about being refused the lollies that had been thoughtfully placed at eye height at the checkout. 

Chariots of entitlement 

Those pushing these Bugabears look pretty fit. And why not? Generally, they dump the kid in a taxpayer-funded crèche so they can do their three-hour work out with spa, massage, holistic therapy and colonic irrigation, before setting out in the behemoth Porsche Cayenne to give the plastic a workout at the local shopping centre. And now bloody Westfield is encouraging them.
A mate who parked happily in one of these spots copped a spray from some self- entitled yuppie. She told her to get stuffed. What about us older folk pushing laden shopping trolleys? The bloody wheels never work and keeping one under control is a major exercise. Are we to be consigned to the dark backblocks of these subterranean caves? I am sure I won’t be able to help myself crashing into the Bugabears’ four-wheel drives on my way to parking Siberia.
Soon, anyone who has the resources to make enough noise will be claiming special status. As my mate said, “I have one boob bigger than the other. I should get special parking too.” Quite right, although I have to say I hadn't noticed that physical imperfection.
But the parking bays issue faded as I heard the growing whine of the cosseted recipients of barrow loads of taxpayer largesse. I am sure they are the same people who feel it is their right to get pole position in shopping centre car parks because they are pushing a pram. That wonderful noise you hear in the background is the sound of the privileged classes of this country screaming their little middle-class-welfared lungs out, having been caught with their hands in the till.
I refer to the My School Website which went live last week and showed the shocking disparity between what the wealthy schools have by way of resources and what our state school system has.

Religion: Is it safe for the kiddies?

Adam and Eve, where all the trouble started. 

When I pass through the Westfield at Bondi Junction, I realise that, like the migrating birds at Macquarie Marshes, sometimes it is full of kids and sometimes it isn’t. For parts of the year they must go somewhere during the day. I think that place is school. I don't think much about school children these days, so the debate about ethics classes and religious teaching in state schools all but passed me by.
I am not sure whose bright idea it was to legislate to make it mandatory for religious education to be part of the primary school curriculum in NSW but I suspect the dead hand of Henry Parkes. He is often named as one of the fathers of federation but he is also one of the architects of the White Australia Policy, being a man very much opposed to the Chinese.
As well, he saw Fenian plots around every corner and generally dumped the Micks, especially Irish Micks, into the same boat as the Chinese. The rise of systemic Catholic schools is attributed to his anti-Catholic views.
NSW sits strangely, when one looks at the Constitution (every day, now that you ask). It is an appalling document when it comes to setting out basic human rights and is really only a mercantile contract drawn up by warring colonies to manage trade between them. Many of the big arguments about federation centred on ensuring all these fancy ideas of human rights would not be in the final document. But it does have a clause which makes state-sponsored religion unconstitutional. I am sure this was to ensure the Micks (they breed like bloody rabbits) didn’t suddenly end up in the majority and started imposing Papist law on everyone. Bit like the idiot arguments run by the gibberers in the Liberal Party about Sharia law.
Plus ça change.

Hairspray and curling wands are not policies

Which brings us to NSW.
Is it enough to run for election as Premier of NSW relying on a can of hairspray and a curling wand? Probably not. Jeff Kennett won a few elections in Victoria using industrial-strength hairspray (superglue?) but I’m not sure Kristina Keneally will be as lucky. Nor should she be.
I am mystified by the soft-shoe shuffle she gets from most of the press (male). It is the Sarah Palin factor: a whiff of perfume, a tight skirt and a well-turned calf and they lose all reason. The Australian’s Imre Salusinszky is positively tumescent and needs to get a room (by himself). Here's a few from the lovestruck fool http://goo.gl/jgXuw in which he stands up for Kristina against big bad bully Rudd and on March 10 last year he wrote in The Australian: “Kristina Keneally — the Premier of NSW and my future second wife — wrote to Rudd last week …”. Creepy
If Kristina were a bloke, she would be getting a kicking.
She is one of the magic NSW Right who thinks that just turning up is enough. Bob Carr did it for 10 years. When he realised people had sussed out that he was a totally useless phoney, he slid easily into a job at Macquarie Bank. What he does there is a mystery. He never did anything as premier. Why would he change the habits of a lifetime? I expect he is just on the door as a meeter and greeter, occasionally bringing the chairman’s car up from the car park.
No, that can’t be right. I just remembered he can’t drive. Helena has to cart him around, taking time out from her real job − running a printing company, I think it is.
It was amusing to see Bob was a member of the panel looking into where Labor went wrong last year. The answer that never surfaced is that the Labor Party is dominated by people like Carr who think just being in office is enough.
Whether you like it or not, the big issue for NSW during Bob’s reign was power privatisation but he powdered at the first whiff of grapeshot from the unions and retired to his Gore Vidal novels, convinced that he was right: don’t try to do anything; people might notice.`
So we have a state that is down the dunny. The only things that seem to have been introduced in the 10 years of Bob the Builder are toll roads and trains to the airport that are more expensive than a Tiger Air ticket to Melbourne.

The only place Kristina will be outrunning the voters 

Anyway, back to Kristina. We all know why she is there. The uglies of the NSW Right began to apprehend that maybe people didn’t like ’em and hoped they would be distracted by the sheila.
She has good set of pins, dresses well and has managed to get rid of the seppo accent – well, mostly. She is a bit like Westpac’s Gail Kelly who wrestles with her Jaapie accent in times of stress.
So Kristina “I’m nobody’s girl” wanders in, playing her best dress-up role yet: NSW Premier.

Julia, haven't the billionaires suffered enough?

The latest public opinion poll for Julia was not good. For some reason Australians like the Libs more than Labor.
Paradoxically they like Julia better than Tony Abbott. Don't they realise that a vote for the Libs gets you the set of steak knives as well? You can't have Libs without Tony, or Christopher Pyne for that matter. Why isn't that enough to turn most people's stomach?
But what it all means I don't know. And as there is nearly three years before we have to think about this I couldn't care less. Although having said that, I do enjoy seeing Tony Abbott in opposition all the time thinking he should be head prefect instead of that stupid ranga girl. `
The polls also showed we favor the flood levy. Not by a big margin and possibly only by the margin between those who have to pay it and those who don't.
Most of us are in favor of someone else paying instead of us.
It's called democracy, I think.
Down in the cheap seats it's hard not to feel for the poor dears being asked to stump up the $5 dollars a week max most will have to pay. And that's even though we know that it's the equivalent of Amanda Vantsone's famous hamburger and a milk shake. Although one wonders if that is all Amanda spends on hamburgers and milk shakes but let's not go down that road.

Verity I say unto you

The NSW education minister Verity Firth seems like a personable egg.
She is a member of that endangered Labor party species, the NSW Labor left. They enjoy no real power and perform the role of a pinata for the spivs and urgers who run the NSW Labor Party, hereafter known as Sussex Street.
This mob ritually slaughter the left once a year at the annual conference. They also run party hit squads who go out to put down any sign of a leftist uprisings in the branches.
Bob Carr, Stephen Loosley, Richo are all members of this bunch. Carr and Loosley are a tedious pair. Carr acted as Premier of NSW for years and managed to do very little except brush up on his German and bore people spitless with his knowledge of obscure facts about American politics. Improving the lot of the common man, aka traditional Labor supporters, is seen as an affectation of the left.

Shades of self importance

( A letter to the Wentworth Courier in response to calls on council to build a shelter.)
One can sympathise with Uri Butnaru with the call for a shaded structure at Bondi Beach. Our correspondent relates how pleas for such a structure have fallen on deaf ears at Waverley Council.
I know the feeling. Only last year my suggestion for shade cloth to be extended over the whole of the beach and well out to sea to protect us from the sun's rays even while swimming, also fell on deaf ears at the unfeeling council.
All power to you Uri. But I am a little puzzled by what you want. You say when "council is approached to build a measly little shelter costing only a few thousand dollars
, what reply do we get from the council?" "Oh, maybe we'll place one in the children's playground.".
Uri claims there are hundreds if not thousands of people wanting a shaded area and have petitioned the council. Now my worry is that these thousands of people will find it very cramped and indeed hot and humid under a such "measly little structure" .The idea of crowding people into a small hot place was tried in 1756 by the Nawab of Bengal with unfortunate results for those taking advantage of his hospitality.