Who are the ignoble larrikins?

Posted on 31 March, 2022 by alloporus

Say what you think and mean what you say.

Not a bad adage at all. People will like you for your honesty and integrity, two of the most important human attributes.

Indeed without these two, we would be far less successful as a species for we would not have commerce, collaboration or cooperation. Nor would we have science, technology and engineering for these are professions built on self-policing rules that fail without honesty.

Australians have a reputation for saying what they think — they are keen on the first part of the adage.

Many are larrikins too, with a healthy disregard for convention. It is ok to play golf in thongs or even bare feet.

And after living in Australia for 25 years, I have to say that Australians mean what they say for the most part. Although sometimes I am not sure they think before spouting forth, another expression of larrikinism.

Author Lech Blaine suggests that conservative politicians in Australia have commandeered this straight-shooting on the fringes into a blue-collar revolution for their political ends.

Quote from Lech Blaine on fabricated larrikins

Stupid white men wearing white shirts pretending to be working class is an odd image.

These well-educated and affluent individuals would never dream of playing golf in thongs. They only pretend to be among the masses, especially the working-class battlers, because this is where elections are won.

In one of the most complex voting systems in the world with two-foot ballot papers and weirdness with preferences, Liberal governments win enough seats not by playing to their rusted-on base of conservative support but by pretending to represent the undecided in a handful of seats at each election. And these swing voters are not in the cities; they are in the suburbs and the rural areas.

Now the shirt-wearing men not only have to pretend to wear overalls but drive a tractor too.

The men courting the battlers never shoot straight. They are the ignoble larrikins. They prefer to be on holiday in Hawaii than in front of the wildfire and anonymously report the thong wearer to the golf club chairman.

They lie and cheat and pork-barrel their way into the top political jobs.

And we let them.

As the French Ambassador to Australia said, “What you say in confidence … will eventually be used and weaponised against you one day.”

Shame on us.

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The left left their talk to the right

Posted on 24 March, 2022 by alloporus

True freedom emerges from respect for other people.

This is George Monbiot doing his thing in an article about how leftwingers — his crew — are lured to the far-right by conspiracy theories.

It is true because the world is upside down, in a scary state of flux.

Democracy as we thought we knew it, with a vote cast, tallied and winners declared after a simple count, is not strong enough anymore. It can’t resist the manipulation of the socials or the authoritarian undermining by the lawmakers.

One minute we all agree to stay at home, don masks and not see friends and family for months, all at significant personal and emotional cost, then we are told to go for it. Some do for a short while until reality voluntarily puts us back at home.

Check out Australia in its wet summer of 2021/22.

Apparently, with the health system straining like never before and frontline staff at the end of their rope, it is the right time for the Australian government to announce a $3.5 billion expenditure on 120 military tanks from the United States. This is more than 10% of the $30.2 billion NSW Health budget for 2020-21.

It is weird and scary.

Well, we could always vote them out.

Only the point that Monbiot makes is summarised in this quote.

The left left their talk to the right.

And the right left their talk to the left.

Rumsfeld would be delighted with such linguistic conflagration.

So when I exercise my democratic right to vote and place a cross on a ballot, the choice is impossible. There is no way of deciding who stands for what anymore.

All we know is the period of stability in the age-old power balance between people and state is over. The struggle is back, and for the moment, it is the state and the supporting cast to the authoritarians that have the upper hand.

People beware.

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The right of free speech

Posted on 17 March, 2022 by alloporus

So Neil Young decided to remove his song catalogue from Spotify because he didn’t like what another Spotify artist, Joe Rogan, said on his popular podcasts.

Then Joni Mitchell came out saying the same thing, remove, please.

I am conflicted by this.

Anyone, including Rogan, who peddles crazy ideas and statements that are potentially harmful to anyone, is out of order.

However, if we want free speech, Rogan has a right to speak even if what he says is nonsense and dangerous. After all, he claims to be a comic.

Equally, Spotify customers have the right not to listen.

They choose to stream a podcast or not. And that is the key. Nobody is forced to listen to Joe Rogan for three hours or any other anti or alternative purveyor of brain farts; each person chooses to listen.

Of course, this version of free speech where anyone can say anything must assume that listeners are discerning.

Not only must all Spotify customers have the skills and experience to decide for themselves, but they must also exercise the ability routinely. The reality is that many don’t have the skills — few schools teach discernment and the mental fortitude to turn off a feed — nor do those listeners who have a discerning taste use it all the time.

Crap gets into all our lives.

Then there is another problem.

Neil Young has 6 million monthly listeners and Joni Mitchell 3.5 million. Modern heyday artists like Drake or Adele are in the region of 60 million listeners keen enough to follow an artist and stream their songs.

Unless they get publicity by pulling their catalogue, the older generation simply doesn’t have the reach.

As Guardian reporter Edward Helmore puts it, “Streaming is highly competitive, with low margins. Apple, Google, and Amazon are competing for market share. Spotify reported 172m paying subscribers, up from 144m when it signed Rogan. When it comes to plotting a lucrative future in modern media, Young, a cultural legend, was simply not competitive.”

Not that this stand against stupidity is to gain more streams, not even Alloporus is that cynical, but it does leverage past infamy into present-day relevance. Presumably, the hardcore fans are still listening to albums on vinyl and care little for the pristine 160kbps, so there is little to sacrifice.

And no doubt such established artists don’t need the change either.

This is all a little convoluted, and maybe I am missing the point.

Everyone should stand up to what they know to be wrong in whatever way they can within the constraints of no harm to others.

Songwriters limiting their audience in protest at another’s voice just seems an odd way to go about it.

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Carbon offsets are terrific

Posted on 11 March, 2022 by alloporus

Just wrote a post on Medium to explain why carbon offsets are fantastic, really.

I used the analogy of a hammer to drive home a nail.

A carbon offset is a tool we need to deal with the climate change issue, just like a hammer is a tool. If we use the tool poorly and get a greenwash outcome of companies buying credits to make themselves look good. Then it’s hardly fair to blame the tool.

The post went to Medium rather than here on Alloporus because there’s a debate going on there. Some people are adamant that carbon offsets are a terrible thing and we must get rid of them and they’re not going to solve the problem.

And to be fair, they have a point, but I wanted to make sure that they understood the point they were making.

If you hit your finger with a hammer while trying to knock in a nail, is it the hammer’s fault?

Have a read of the post to see my explanation.

Fear not, Alloporus will continue with weekly ramblings but do check out Alloporus on Medium for extra rants and raves.

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When the beds are burning

Posted on 10 March, 2022 by alloporus

Along with countless others, I am distressed and annoyed at my inability to change minds.

Of course, this feeling of frustration is a weakness on my part, an inability to realise that others minds are their own, and it is no business of mine to go in there and change anything.

But there are times when the zen-like clarity of ‘what will be will be’ fails me.

One such time occurred recently. I read an article entitled ‘For humanity to survive, we must make Australia’s politicians feel our fear and rage’. And so we should. The article contained some solid statements about how Australia and especially its politicians must wake up to a changing world and the reality of climate change.

My frustration built then boiled over when reading this paragraph that quotes, with great moral fortitude, the words of the school strikes movement.

I agree wholeheartedly with the premise… just do your job.

The source of the frustration was that the article’s author is Peter Garrett AM, minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts from 2007 to 2010 in the Rudd and Gillard governments.

I just can’t take the irony anymore.

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An experience most painful

Posted on 3 March, 2022 by alloporus

Sir Winston Churchill was a man of his time.

He was a British statesman and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War, a Sandhurst-educated soldier, a Nobel Prize-winning writer and historian, a prolific painter, and one of the longest-serving politicians in British history.

Remembered as the leader the British people needed to repel the spread of nazi fascism, he was at the same time a social reformer, an economic liberal and an imperialist.

Such a combination may seem odd today but understandable given the late Victorian and Edwardian eras that he grew up in.

Churchill was a canny politician, being an MP for over 60 years, and he knew a thing or two about people and words.

Here is one quote from his 1948 book The Gathering Storm, the first of his twelve-volume memoir on the Second World War

Most painful.

This is a man convinced that rearmament was essential because the war was inevitable. The House was still hoping for peace because another war so soon after the horrors of WW1 was unthinkable.

How many truth-tellers have the experience most painful?

We can count on many frontline staff and public health experts, from epidemiologists to hospital administrators, feeling that pain right now.

The environmentalists have been suffering for decades.

Now the young are feeling the pain too. Truth-telling over climate and the environment has fallen on their bold shoulders.

Reading Churchill is sobering. Knowing that the House has always been hard of hearing may make it easier to take modern ostrich behaviour from our leaders. Leaders rarely heed warnings.

Although Sir Winston felt despair, he led with irrepressible fortitude through the darkest time in British history, forcing people to listen.

It is time to channel that tenacity again.

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