Restores my faith in humanity

This is my favourite story of the day. A dude goes into a record shop, at which he is a regular customer, puts a Pink Floyd album on order, gives his name and phone number, and then swipes money from the register with 4 cameras watching him. I love that I can rely on such people to bring a grin to an evening that also brought a southerly change (and therefore serious coldness again).

Brings back memories of stupidities past. 4 guys went into Ingleburn Bowling Club many moons ago, back when my Dad was still alive and frequented said establishment. You have to sign into a club, but they were canny and signed in with false names. They held up the bar and took about $500 (from memory). When the police arrived they checked the sign-in book, you know, just in case. Scanning down the names our brilliant boys in blue were not, in fact, fooled by Jimi Hendrix's signature. Furthermore, they recognised Jimi's address as that belonging to a fellow "known to police". When they arrived at that address, the 4 lads were at the kitchen table counting the money.

Keep your poverty out of my face

The Alice Springs council has hit upon a magnificent way to further racism without discomforting any of its white inhabitants (or realistically anyone who has sufficient means to look after themselves).

The ABC have reported that the council has put out a set of by-laws for public comment. They include such things as being able to remove and destroy the blankets of homeless people that are stashed away during the day by their owners. Currently, rangers are allowed to remove them from their hidey holes, but are obliged to return them to an Indigenous organisation. From the above-linked article:

The Mayor of Alice Springs, Damien Ryan, says the new by-laws are what the community wants.

"Begging is an issue that is not very acceptable in the fact that people prey on other people, they prey on the elderly, they prey on visitors, they prey on families," he said.

"I mean begging, or humbugging, is something that is not appreciated in the community.

"We don't have anyway to stamp that out, that's why this has been brought about."

Yes, please keep your filthy poverty out of my face. How dare you show up how much our society has failed you?

The Mayor has denied racism, but realistically, the fact that the retrieved blankets are currently returned to an "Indigenous organisation" belies that. Not to mention that whether it is racist or classist hardly matters, it is stomping on those most disadvantaged instead of facing up to the challenge of addressing that disadvantage.

Don't get me wrong, I have an inkling of the problems faced by a council trying to deal with endemic poverty in an indigenous population. There are no quick fixes, generations of disadvantage can't be wiped away with a grant or a new house. But I think I can fairly confidently say that kicking the poorest of your people in the teeth is unlikely to resolve any long standing social issues.

More old news

I have been listening to Hack episodes from 3 weeks ago, and so just heard about the woman and her boyfriend who have been charged with procuring a miscarriage (and supporting a person who is ....). WTF?

In case anyone was wondering why abortion needs to be legalised, as opposed to its current, "illegal but you can make a defense" status, this is it.

Essentially, for reasons undisclosed (and irrelevant, really), the woman in question used a drug to induce her own abortion. She used a drug routinely used in abortion all over the world. However, Queensland law only allows for surgical abortion, any termination using medication is on shaky legal grounds. Caroline De Costa, a Queensland obstetrician has been campaigning on this point for some time, and hasn't managed to raise any formal response from politicians or the state's Attorney General.

I can't help thinking that the Powers That Be think that De Costa has been nitpicking - that the law is fine. Yes, it might only specify surgery, but no-one would suggest it didn't cover medical abortion. Only some bright spark in Cairns has suggested it. I think this because I never assume malice when stupidity will do.

So if you are wondering why the law needs to be changed from what seems to have been working for so long, consider this couple who are the first to be charged with this offense in 50 years. If you keep a law that allows you to shoot Scotsmen with a bow and arrow between 6pm and 6am, one day, someone will shoot one.

I am such an idiot

Apparently in my world, there are two 13th of Decembers. My sister told me about the Spicks and Speck-tacular show in Wollongong, and I thought "Why not?" and bought tickets. I already knew that date was taken, but when I mentally checked the date, I counted forward from the beginning of December, instead of backwards from Christmas, which would be the file my brain shoved that other event in.

So, if anyone knows someone who would like to buy a pair of tickets to the show (and who doesn't know Mim & Adam), please point them in my direction.

--Repeatedly bangs head on desk--

Guess what?

When you put up the price of pre-mixed drinks, people buy more straight spirits. When they first suggested this price increase, I didn't think they'd really do it. But they raised the tax by 70% on pre-mixed drinks. Since then sales of pre-mixed drinks have dropped by 30%, sales of straight spirits are up 46%. The meaningful bit of data is that this represents 21 million more standard drinks. Wow, who would have thought that teenagers would find something else to drink? Or even more amazing, when presented with a bottle of bourbon and a bottle of coke, your average punter drinks more in a night than when drinking pre-mixed cans?

The industry body said they expected the sales to shift from pre-mixed to straight, but they didn't expect an increase. I don't know why not. It seemed like the most obvious outcome to me. Do they not remember being teenagers? Could they not see that taking a 6 pack of pre-mix to a party results in less alcohol consumption than a bottle of bourbon? Just how stupid are these people?

If I ran the world...

I would hire local people to contribute the information for a child's smart globe. Apart from getting the facts straight, they might avoid complete non-sequitors.

Some extracts from Ben's globe:

Wellington (NZ) is slightly bigger than Geraldton

Darwin is a little bigger than Coober Pedy

Coober Pedy is about twice as big as Uluru.

Hobart is about two times the size of Wollongong (pronounced with a short o in the first syllable rather than an oo)

Dunedin (pronounced Doonedin)

Oceania is the smallest of Earth's seven continents. In it you will find Australia and New Zealand and many small islands...It is usually hot here all year round...

Well, that's really cleared up my confusion about the size of Wellington... I just don't get explaining a more significant city in terms of a tiny little one. And why does Cooper Pedy rate so much of a mention? And why is it described in terms of a rock?

Baby packs

I caught this news clip on Triple J this afternoon.

They say the baby bonus has been extremely damaging in Cape York communities, leading to more teenage pregnancies and men using violence to force partners off contraception and to hand over the bonus.

Instead they propose handing out baby packs containing things like nappies and formula as an incentive for children to have regular health checks.

Just how many ways is this wrong?

From a practical point of view, what do you put in baby packs that equal the value of the baby bonus? What does every baby need? OK, many, many babies use disposable nappies, but not all, and not enough of them to make up the total. Formula? WTF? Fine, if it's required, but lots of people don't need it. There is virtually nothing else that any given child definitely needs. Maybe a $100 worth of bathing products might be handy, especially for people living in remote communities. Not exactly thousands of dollars' worth.

And then if you manage to come up with something that makes any sense at all, how come only black fellas need to be told how to spend the money? Why not extend it to everyone? Of course, it wouldn't have helped me, I am one of those lucky white people who happen to live somewhere that still has private obstetricians, so I spent all of mine on her, and it didn't cover it. But I'm guessing the people referred to above don't have that choice. I guess if they already have most of their choices wiped out, taking away some more won't matter.

And then of course, we come to the real point. It makes me so angry I can barely write coherently about it. We are talking about communities in which many people are disenfranchised, have poor living standards and little hope for a future improvement. Women are even more so. The baby bonus pays women directly, it should be empowering but the power balance is so skewed it is being used against them. So we look at this horrific situation and we say "Bad Baby Bonus" - clearly it is the root of all evil. We don't say "What do we need to do to support these women?". Or even more sensibly "What do these women want us to do?".

I think there are a whole host of ways the money spent on the baby bonus could be better used (doing something about the insane insurance premiums removing private obs from business for one, but I'm guessing there could be plenty of others), but there is nothing to be gained by treating remote indigenous women like children. Truly unbelievable.