Friday on My Mind Archives - Page 11 of 31

Hoarding cash in a cashless society

hoarding-cash-cashless — Image by S. Hermann and F. Richter, Pixabay.com

Australians have been hoarding cash, particularly through the first year of Covid-19, despite forecasts that we will be a 98% cashless society by 2024. Even if this prediction from global payments giant FIS comes to pass, some 540,000 Australians will still prefer to use cash.

You may recall a flurry of news stories on this topic in March. The research commented on the effect of a de facto ban on cash during the first year of Covid-19. Even now, merchants are discouraging the use of cash at point of sale.

The topic was prompted when Professor Steve Worthington of Swinburne University’s business school sent me an article he prepared for the ANZ Bank publication, Blue Notes. The topic was ‘Can cash survive the digital tide?’

Prof Worthington says the key issue with the domination of electronic transactions is that it excludes people who either rely on cash or prefer to use it. He argues that physical cash should be classified as an essential service (designated as a Public Good).

It may not surprise to learn that Australia’s high cash users are likely to be older people, have lower household incomes, live in regional areas and are less likely to have access to the Internet.

As you’d know, banks offer their customers internet banking, but you need a secure internet link to do so.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) estimates that two million Australians do not have access to the Internet. Many Australians use public internet, most commonly at public libraries – not the most secure method of conducting Internet banking.

Prof Worthington notes that there is now more cash in Australia than ever before, with record growth in 2020. But it is not showing up in the Reserve Bank of Australia’s statistics as being circulated.

A cash payments study by the RBA in June last year confirmed that Australian consumers were continuing to switch to electronic payment methods in preference to cash. The share of in-person cash payments was still substantial; at 32% by number and 19% by value in 2019, down from 43% and 30% respectively in 2016. But generally, we have taken to tapping and going.

Meanwhile, the RBA is mystified by the rising demand for cash, which does not show up in circulation data. Cash (notes issued in excess of those returned), soared 17% during 2020. The average in the decade prior was 5% a year. The Reserve Bank went to its contingency fund twice during 2020, such was the demand for $50 and $100 notes. There are now 36 $50 notes and 16 $100 notes in circulation for every person in the country.

(“Where are mine?” – She Who Keeps Coins in a Tin for Christmas).

Tabloid newspapers and current affairs programmes go to the ‘stashed under the mattress’ cliche when reporting on this curious social trend. Given the meagre returns available on term deposits and the comparatively low cost of domestic safes, it is fair to assume some people have a stash of cash at home.

There could be many reasons for this apart from convenience; like hiding one’s income from the tax office, Centrelink or the ex.

I’m from the pounds shillings and pence era when shops would not cash a cheque unless they had previously done business with the person presenting it. Cash was definitely King then.

My Dad used to call hard currency ‘filthy lucre’ and while he took cash over the counter in the bakery shop, he always washed his hands before handling food. The term ‘filthy lucre’ does not mean that banknotes are dirty – it’s a biblical reference to ill-gotten gains. But I digress.

Australians have gravitated big time to electronic banking solutions. The biggest clue is the absence of queues at ATM machines and mass withdrawal of ATMs in city suburbs – 2,500 gone in 2020 alone.

Forecasts that Australia would be a virtual cashless society by 2024 were drawn from a new report by financial giant FIS Global. Mike Kresse, head of global payments at FIS, believes cash will be virtually retired by 2030.

“From individual consumers and small businesses to the largest clients, cash can’t compete with rising expectations for fast, safe and easy payments,” he said when launching FIS Global’s annual report.

“The smartphone was already transforming payments, and the pandemic brought the future faster, accelerating the trends.”

FIS forecast that by 2024, Australia will be the fourth most cash-averse economy in the world after Sweden, Denmark and Hong Kong.

Prof Worthington says Australian authorities need to work on establishing a way to include people who still want to use cash, hence his plea to consider cash as an essential service.

“We are using less cash as a payment system, but today people still need access to cash. That may be because of a desire for privacy, convenience or as a backup payment option when all else fails.”

Cash is still the preferred payment option of many small traders and sub contractors. The Australian Taxation Office (ATO ) occasionally has a blitz on companies thought to be under-reporting income, one year targeting 45,000 small businesses.

“We use a range of tools to identify and take action against people and businesses that may not be correctly meeting their obligations,” the ATO says.

“Through data matching, we can identify businesses that don’t have electronic payment facilities.

“These businesses often advertise as ‘cash only’ or mainly deal in cash transactions. When businesses do this, they are more likely to make mistakes or don’t keep thorough records.”

It’s comforting to know that the ATO differentiates between the cash economy, the ‘shadow’ economy and the ‘black’ economy, the latter run by organised crime groups dealing in drugs, prostitution and people smuggling.

This topic got me thinking about the day in 1984 when I was locked in a secure room with a million dollars. Our chief of staff had been asked to send a reporter and photographer to a bank branch in Toowoomba. The occasion was the arrival of Australia’s first $100 note – in this instance 10,000 notes delivered in a square block. The cash was transported by train from the Reserve Bank mint at Craigieburn in Victoria. Secrecy was paramount and we were not told when the photo opportunity would happen until half an hour prior.

I have to tell you, a million dollars in $100 notes takes up a lot of space in a room. Our photographer fitted a wide angle lens to best capture the great block of notes and obligatory men in suits.

These days, I almost always carry cash in my wallet and feel naked if I run out. Despite having a debit card and a credit card, it somehow just isn’t the same. Even during Covid in 2020, when retailers looked askance at people tendering banknotes, I slipped the odd five or ten across the counter. Cash will always be an attractive option for some people because (a) it is anonymous and (b) does not leave an electronic trail.

After all, until the day when marijuana is decriminalised, regular users will turn up at the usual location with $300 or so in cash. There are many such occasions when consumers are unlikely to use buy now-pay later options.

No sooner had I written that, an ad for Safepay popped up on my screen! How do they do that?

Covid triggering depression and anxiety

covid-depression-black-dog — Image: The author and black dog, moving day 2019 (before Covid-19)

It’s the lead news story you’d probably never see on prime time TV, a focus on depression and anxiety and how Covid-19 and the control response has seen more of us succumb to the Black Dog.

Newsreader: “Researchers have published new data that show the incidence of depression and anxiety among travellers stranded in Queensland has soared in recent months.

“70% of those who reported acute anxiety or depression over the past six months were people from New South Wales and Victoria who find themselves exiled in Queensland.”

(Cross-over to interview)

Interviewer: Julianna and husband Dario* have been stranded in Queensland since a road trip north in June turned into five months in exile. Our correspondent caught up with them at Sapphire, after the couple had spent a fruitless week fossicking for opals.

Julianna: “It was fun until it wasn’t fun. I mean, how many times can you go to the Qantas Museum? I miss my grandkids and I miss Victoria, the markets and all the good foods you can’t buy in outback Queensland.

Dario: “Yeh, Julianna’s right And, you know, a 20-foot caravan might seem big until you have to live in it for months on end. It always smells like fried eggs.”

Interviewer: So you have both slipped into a state of anxiety and depression as a result of not being able to go home?

Julianna: “Yeh, well it’s not logical – I mean the sun’s shining and the birds are singing and every day we feel safe because there’s hardly any cases in Queensland. But I’ve been feeling increasingly sad and apathetic.”

Dario: “And I’ve been drinking more than I usually do…

Julianna: “You reckon?”

Satire it may be, but it’s no laughing matter, this dark mood which can inexplicably darken the sunniest Queensland day. The symptoms are not hard to read: feeling tired all the time, not going out much, feeling miserable, feeling that nothing good ever happens, relying on alcohol…

Sunday is World Mental Health Day, although why we only get one day a year is something to ponder.

Multiple studies have been carried out that link the increased incidence of anxiety and depression to the global pandemic and the response by authorities to control the virus.

Professor Richard Bryant from UNSW’s School of Psychology says people find it harder to cope as time goes by.

“We are having a longer and later lockdown experience than the rest of the world, due to the lack of people who are vaccinated and the Delta strain of COVID.

“What we tend to see is that people get anxious at the start, then when the effects of social isolation wear on, it becomes a depressive reaction: people’s coping resources get eroded over time.”

Prof Bryant said the Delta strain and the effect of younger people dying has elevated anxieties among that cohort because they thought COVID was mainly a risk for older persons.(Apparently not taking into account the possibility of their catching Covid and passing it on to older people, such as their parents. Ed)

He says we can learn about the trajectories of mental health in Australia by looking at countries that are somewhat ahead of us.

“For example, one study in the UK sampled people at varying points during the pandemic. This study found that two months into lockdown, which is approximately where much of Australia is positioned now, the rate of people’s anxiety had decreased marginally relative to earlier periods during the pandemic.

However, at that stage more than half of the people participating in the study were still reporting anxiety.”

Three months after lockdowns started in the UK and restrictions were beginning to ease, half of the respondents still reported being worried about the pandemic.

As always, those most vulnerable to mental health problems were young adults, the unemployed, single parents, and people with long-term health conditions.

A recent webinar hosted by Monash Business School explored the impact that deteriorating mental health is having on the Australian economy (estimated at between $40 million and $70 million a year). Covid-19 has driven a rise in the prevalence of depression and anxiety disorders, and is linked to an overall decline in women’s mental health.

Professor Jayashri Kulkami, Head of the Department of Psychiatry at Monash Central Clinical School, uncovered some striking findings from an online survey conducted by her research team looking at ‘Women, COVID-19 and Isolation’.

Professor Jayashri points out that the concept of quarantine is not new, and that isolation is intended to keep people safe. Paradoxically, for some women and children, being isolated at home is doing the opposite.

“The negative consequences include the risk of losing jobs, greater economic vulnerabilities, and psychological health issues resulting from isolation, loneliness and uncertainty.”

Statistics collated by Beyond Blue, one of the many support services people can turn to, show that:

l One in seven Australians will experience a depressive illness in their lifetime;
l One in 16 Australians is currently experiencing depression.
l One quarter of Australians will experience an anxiety condition in their lifetime.
l One in seven Australians is currently experiencing an anxiety condition.
l One in six Australians is currently experiencing depression or anxiety or both.

Fortunately, support-seeking appears to be growing at a rapid rate, with around half of all people with a condition now getting treatment.

Against those long-term stats, an Australian Bureau of Statistics survey published in July found that one in five Australians are reporting high or very high levels of psychological distress linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lockdowns bring unexpected positives

The New Daily’s John Elder set out to find the hidden silver lining beneath this gloomy diagnosis. He examined a survey of 3,000 people by psychologists from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

The May 2020 survey found that more than half reported positive changes in their lives since COVID-19 took hold. In particular, 87% of people were more appreciative of things usually taken for granted. Respondents reported having more time to do enjoyable things, spend more time in nature, pay more attention to personal health and pursue physical activities. (Our garden has never looked so good. Ed)

These changes in behaviour were still in train for half the participants who had reported positive effects.

A December 2020 study from the University of Sydney found that 70% of its 1,000 participants experienced at least one positive effect of the pandemic.

“The top three positive effects were having the opportunity to spend more time with family; having greater flexibility in working arrangements; and appreciating having a less busy life.”

The University of Bath and the University of Lisbon surveyed mothers with one or two children (in the UK and Portugal). Many of them were working at home on reduced wages, while 93% of their children were learning from home via remote learning.

“Nearly 90% of the women found that the hardships caused by the pandemic had provided valuable opportunities. More time with the family, rediscovering small pleasures – but also time to think about their one and only life, and its meaning.”

As Elder found, and you don’t know until you go looking, the Covid pandemic has been responsible for “post-traumatic growth”. This is a formal label for what happens when people undergo a transformation after suffering adversity.

“Many people say they have found meaning in their lives – or at least have begin to ponder more deeply about these big questions that are answered more by feeling, than thinking.”

Things to ponder on Sunday, when we reflect on the 300 million people who struggle with or just simply live with depression.

As we often say around here, when the sun is shining and the birds are singing, “Well, at least we don’t live in Afghanistan.”

*not their real names

FOMM back pages

Submarine Stakes – North Korea 71 Australia 6

Nuclear-powered-submarine — Nuclear powered attack submarine PCU Virginia returning after its maiden voyage in 2004 US Navy photo by General Dynamics Electric Boat Public Affairs CC Wikipedia

Call me late to the party, but this submarine commentary has been on the back burner for a couple of weeks. As long-term readers would know, I often eschew the 24/7 news cycle, in favour of (ahem) in-depth reports.

The headline might look like an outrageous flogging in a rugby match, but it is actually the fact of the matter. North Korea, with a population close to ours (25 million), has 71 submarines. Australia has just six. North Korea’s subs are diesel-electric only, although it does have nuclear weapons and in fact tested a missile just last week! But no nuclear subs as far as we know.

Most of North Korea’s ageing submarine fleet is comprised of relatively small coastal patrol subs or mini subs. An infographic prepared by Al Jazeera shows that the top 10 countries own a total of 343 subs, with North Korea, the US, China and Russia accounting for 247.

Six countries (the US, UK, Russia, China, France and India), have nuclear-powered submarines. The US dominates the nuclear submarine stakes with 68, ahead of Russia (29) and China (12).

That’s the global picture behind Australia’s newly-inked alliance with the US and UK (AUKUS), which led to Australia scrapping a contract with France to build 12 conventionally-fuelled attack submarines. What sharpened the topic was a timely opinion piece in the Brisbane Times by former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

He claims the hyperbole about the new defence alliance has been ‘dialled up to 11’.

I don’t usually pay much attention when a former PM critiques the government of the day. But in Turnbull’s favour, he put the French submarine deal together during his tenure, so he probably knows more about it than most. Despite a tendency to refer to ‘my government’, a trait he holds in common with Kevin Rudd, Turnbull puts the issue into perspective. For a start, he makes it clear that every country that has nuclear submarines has a nuclear industry. He also points out that while Australia is scrapping one contract, it has not replaced it with another; just “discussions’’ over the next 18 months.

“There is no design, no costing, no contract,” Mr Turnbull wrote. “The only certainty is that we won’t have new submarines for 20 years and their cost will be a lot more than the Attack class submarine, the first of which was to be in the water by 2032”.

Veteran investigative journalist Brian Toohey has big problems with the timeline for delivery of the nuclear subs.

“What role will Australia’s nuclear-powered attack submarines play if a war with China breaks out in the next 20 years? The answer is none. The first of these subs will only become operational after 2040 and the last around 2060, if all goes well.

“Worse, they will reportedly cost well over $100 billion, the latest estimate for the cost of the 12 French-Australian conventionally powered submarines that the Morrison government has scuppered.”

Prior to World War 1, there was considerable dissent in Canberra as to whether we should have a submarine fleet at all. In the end we comissioned two subs in 1914 as a response to the enemy’s use of submersibles during WW1. The Royal Australian Navy Submarine Service did not operate subs during WWII but provided bases for allied navies in Fremantle and Brisbane. We also had Oberon class subs from the 1950s to 1970s, mainly used for surveillance. https://www.asc.com.au/submarines/australias-submarine-history/

Our current fleet of six Collins class submarines was built between the 1990s and 2003, subject to massive cost blowouts and delays.

The tactical advantage of the nuclear-powered sub is that it can stay underwater for months at a time without surfacing.

If you have seen movies like the Crimson Tide, The Hunt for Red October, Das Boot or Abyss, you might imagine how submariners feel, cooped up in a metal tube 24/7. There are insights aplenty in the latest BBC melodrama, Vigil. The six-part mini series is made by the team that created Line of Duty. Much is made of the psychological impact of prolonged underwater isolation, the lack of privacy and temptations to stray from a strict regime of regulations.

Australia’s AUKUS announcement is likely to rekindle the flame that burns in the hearts of those who oppose nuclear power and nuclear weapons. This will probably happen regardless of Scott Morrison’s assurances that “Australia has no plans to acquire nuclear weapons”.

The ageing vanguard of the anti-nuclear movement (my vintage), grew up through the Cuban missile crisis, the ensuing Cold War and nuclear power station meltdowns. We had plenty of reasons to oppose Australia’s nuclear ambitions. It was (and still is) widely assumed Australia would at some point embrace nuclear energy, given that we have a plentiful supply of the raw material (uranium).

There was opposition to nuclear power, but the broader movement was aimed at stopping governments from developing (and testing) nuclear weapons. While France is getting all huffy about its scuppered submarine deal, let’s not forget the nuclear tests it carried out in French Polynesia (Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls) between 1966 and 1996. Don’t go there.

You may recall 300,000 anti-nuclear protesters cramming into London’s Hyde Park in 1983. A year later, New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange caused an international ruckus when introducing a ban on nuclear-powered vessels within NZ’s territorial waters.

When journalists asked NZ PM Jacinda Ardern about AUKUS, she said she had not been informed – “Nor would I expect to be.”

Anti-nuclear protesters are also fearful of the dangers of radioactivity leaking from damaged power stations (as happened on Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986) and Fukishima (2011). Check out these 28 accidents (that we know about).

Scarier still is this list of 38 sinkings, collisions, fires and other submarine accidents since the year 2000. Nine nuclear submarine sinkings or scuttlings have a list of their own.

Submarines have come a long way since the world’s first military submersible, The Turtle, which operated during the American Revolution in 1775. Captained by Sergeant Ezra Lee, the pear-shaped submersible failed in an attempt to attach a small mine to the hull of the gun ship, HMS Eagle, in New York harbour. The craft was powered by hand cranked propellers.

Submarines have proven to be the most lethal machines in warfare. The German U-boat fleet lost 178 boats in WWI but sunk 5,000 naval and merchant ships. Likewise in WWII, the U-boat fleet sunk some 3,300 ships, most by firing torpedoes at them.

However, submarines have many uses apart from their peace-time role as a military deterrent. My favourite is the transparent sphere used by David Attenborough’s team to bring us brilliant underwater imagery. Other uses include deep water exploration, research, filming, tourism and private recreational activities. The closest I’ve come is a glass-bottom boat on a Barrier Reef excursion. Ed)

If you have a spare $25 million or so you could ask Seattle-based shipbuilder US Submarines to show you its mid-size luxury submarine yacht model. The Seattle 1000, with a range of 3,000 nautical miles, has five staterooms, five bathrooms, two kitchens, a gym and a wine cellar spread across three levels.

Boys and their toys, eh! My post-war childhood contains a happy memory of bath time, playing with a toy submarine which came free in a cereal packet. The toy sub was powered by household baking powder and one could while away hours in tepid water watching it submerge and surface.

Perhaps you had one too.

Country of origin labelling under review

counhtry-of-origin-labelling — Image: An example of what some might like to see in revised country of origin labelling: source The Conversation

I discovered only in the last year or so that up to 70% of ham and bacon sold in Australia is imported from Europe or the US. Your regular supermarket no doubt helps out by labelling pork products so you know what you are buying.

For example, ham off the bone is almost always produced in Australia. Cheaper cuts and processed ham and smallgoods may contain up to 70% of imported pork. Australian Pork Limited recently found that 10% of shoppers admitted they failed to check or were unaware of country-of-origin labelling.The survey was carried out to support an awareness campaign in South Australia.

While all fresh pork sourced and sold in Australia is locally grown, Australian Pork Limited CEO Margo Andrae urged shoppers to identify Australian ham and bacon products.

“Consumers should check the bar chart on the country-of-origin label, located under the green and gold kangaroo. The bar chart must be almost full or have a percentage of at least 90% Australian ingredients, to guarantee the pork is Australian.” Australian Pork Limited is one of many organisations which has made submissions to a review in 2020 of the country of origin labelling regime. The Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources was aiming to complete its report by July 2021, but so far it has not been publicly released.

Labelling laws were introduced in July 2018, after a furore surrounding a case in 2015 where consumers contracted Hepatitis A from frozen berries imported from China and Chile.

Country of origin (CoOL) labelling requires the food product to contain a label with information stating the percentage (by weight) which is (or is not) Australian made.

For example, a label might read : “Made in Australia from less than 25% Australian ingredients.” The ideal, for those who believe our food is best, are declarations like “made in Australia from 100% Australian ingredients” or “Grown in Australia”.

Consumer organisation Choice, which campaigned for CoOL labelling as early as 2015, also made a submission to the review, voicing concerns aired by subscribers.

“Consumers want to identify whether a product is local or not. However, if a product is not local or has overseas ingredients, consumers want to know the origin of these ingredients. Highlighting the proportion of Australian ingredients does not satisfy the statement ‘country of origin’ nor does it meet consumers’ expectations of food labels. For example, claims such as ‘Made in Australia from at least 25% Australian ingredients’ still leaves consumers in the dark as to where the remaining ingredients come from.”

Other improvements sought by those lobbying the department are to extend labelling to ‘non-priority foods’ which includes biscuits and snack food, confectionery, energy drinks, soft drinks, tea and coffee and bottled water. As you might expect, almost all of the 20,000 Choice subscribers surveyed for this submission said that knowing where the food and drink they buy comes from is important.

More than 90% of respondents use country of origin labelling to make decisions when buying food at the supermarket. About half said they use the labels “frequently” and 40% use it “every time”.

The CoOL scheme is administered by the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC).

When you delve into this topic a little, it does not take long to find that imported foods take up a lot of shelf space in our supermarkets. This is particularly so for the Indian and Asian food shelves and the pasta and sauces section.

For example, when you wheel the trolley (with two wheels veering in opposite directions) into the fish aisle, here’s your dilemma.

Australia dropped out of the canned tuna business a decade ago, finding it too hard to compete with product from South East Asian countries. Countries like Thailand, where most of our canned tuna comes from, have geographical advantages over Australia and a low-cost processing and production chain.

As for canned salmon, sardines and the like, we go top shelf. We may have fallen for the advertising (bears fishing for salmon in fast-flowing Canadian rivers), but we figure the only difference between the pink or red salmon consumed in the wild by bears is that ours comes in a can (and our feet don’t get wet).

According to the Department of Agriculture, 70% of edible fish consumed in Australia is imported from Asia or New Zealand. This may sound arse-about, but Australia exports about half of its annual fisheries and aquaculture production by value ($1.5 billion in 2019-2020). A report by ABARES describes our export trade as “specialising in high unit value products for the growing Asian market”.

“Australia’s reputation as a reliable and high-quality supplier of high unit value fisheries products, and its proximity to Asia’s fast-growing seafood market, generally insulates Australia’s trade in fisheries products from longer-term shocks. The pandemic has caused some disruption to Australia’s usual trade, particularly for products that are highly export oriented, such as rock lobster and abalone.”

The Buy Australian Made campaign has its adherents, most subscribing to the philosophy that it creates and sustains local jobs. A friend became quite incensed recently on discovering that the can of evaporated milk she had bought was imported from Mexico. Irate, she rang the parent company to complain.

“Why can’t we make it here?” she said (to me).”

She has a point, when you consider that condensed milk is just dairy milk with the water removed and sugar added.

It wasn’t too hard to find out that we did indeed make both evaporated and condensed milk at a factory in Victoria. The owner, Nestle, announced the phased closure of the factory in August 2019, with the loss of 106 jobs.

General Manager Andrew McIver, reflecting on the decision to close and move production to Nestle’s overseas factories, said: “People just don’t buy tinned milk like they used to, and cheaper imports have eroded our business further.”

Dairy Australia says imported milk comprises about 2% of Australia’s dairy imports, mostly specialty cheeses from New Zealand and Europe.

Should we really care too much about where food comes from? Some years ago, I bought a packet of frozen peas from a supermarket, not even looking or thinking about country origin. I got the bag home and read “Produce of Poland” on the label. Then I checked the map and found that Poland is just 709 kms from Chernobyl, the site of a nuclear plant meltdown in 1986.

Said packet of peas came in handy when I injured my knee (against the corner of my desk), but eventually I threw it away.

There have been enough high profile incidents of food recalls over the years to raise our levels of awareness about the risk of contamination.

Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) says that food recalls averaged 76 a year between 2011 and 2020. While we are all aware of cases where recalled food was contaminated by salmonella, listeria and e coli, these are in the minority.

Almost half of the recalls in 2020 were foods with ‘undeclared allergens’ (e.g. milk, eggs, peanut). Of these recalls, just over half were imported food products. Anyone can sign up to FSANZ to receive food recall alerts

Should you be unfortunate enough to buy a recalled food products before it it removed from the shelf, the advice is to return it to the retailer for a full refund.

Or, like the peas from Poland, you could just chuck it out.

Music festivals and footie finals

music-festivals-grand-finals — Night shot of the Neurum Creek Festival marquee

Some of our musician friends in Melbourne and Sydney have ‘festival envy’, akin to the mixed emotions felt by southern footie fans who will miss out on this year’s grand finals.

As you might know, the National Rugby League (NRL) moved all teams across the border into Queensland. As a result of ongoing Covid lockdowns in Victoria and New South Wales, this year’s Grand Final will be held in Brisbane for the first time ever. Likewise, the Aussie Rules Grand Final has been moved from Melbourne to Western Australia.

As for those southern musicians, most if not all of their live music events have been cancelled or postponed. For people who combine day jobs (also affected by lockdowns), with weekend gigs, these are very hard times. It’s been harder still for those who do earn a living from music and persevere with touring plans and CD launches, only to see them curtailed by lockdowns.

So we can consider ourselves blessed to have performed at one of the few music festivals to go ahead in Australia last weekend at Neurum Creek bush retreat near Woodford (see image above).

The Neurum Creek Music Festival is in its 15^th year, not counting a cancellation in 2020. It’s a medium-sized festival held outdoors (a camping weekend). The organisers hire one very large marquee with associated infrastructure for a bar and a ‘green room’ for performers. It is a minimalist event – numbers are capped at 1,000 and most of the work is done by volunteers. There were three food stalls this year and a hugely popular coffee van. The festival is billed as an ‘acoustic music’ festival,(ie no heavy drum kits or electronica, thankfully. Ed) with 23 acts performing from Friday evening through to Sunday afternoon.

Organisers Angela Kitzelman and Don Jarmey kept a daily watch on Covid developments in Queensland while planning the 2021 event.

“We sat down and assessed the risk.” Angela said. “It’s a very relaxed festival that we run and the money that we spend on it goes mainly to performers, for the marquee costs and the sound guys.

“It was looking at how much we spend and also looking at the situation in Queensland and what the health directions were.

“At the time we decided to go ahead with it, there had been a lockdown. We came out and talked to the camp site managers. They told us that in the event of a Covid lockdown cancellation, people who had booked tickets could get a full credit to do it at another time.

“We realised we could afford to do this at half capacity, as it was at the time, and be very clear that we would pick (the festival) up and put it on another date if something happened.”

After looking carefully at their finances, the organisers decided to press the ‘go’ button, without the usual lead time to host music festivals.

“We invite people to play and say this is how much we can afford to pay.

“We didn’t have enough time to invite expressions of interest so we just asked people who had played here before, abiding by our rule that performers don’t get to play two years in a row.”

“Our advantage is that people come for the festival itself. We don’t have headline performers. We often sell out before I’ve finished finalising the programme. People come here for the experience.”

While Queensland has been able to avoid ongoing lockdowns, some music festivals have been cancelled or postponed regardless. Last month, Woodfordia announced the cancellation of its six-day Woodford Folk Festival, held at New Year. Instead, the organisation will schedule smaller events called Bushtime.

The Byron Bay Blues Festival, which was cancelled just one day out from the Easter 2021 programme, has been postponed again to April 2022. The National Folk Festival, held in Canberra at Easter, has called for expressions of interest for 2022, a move which surprised many, as it was cancelled in 2020 and 2021.

Illawarra Folk Festival artistic director David De Santi took to Facebook this week to announce the cancellation of the music festival set down for 13-16 January, 2022.

“It is just too hard in the current climate for a non-profit association to take the risk on a festival of the scale of the Illawarra Folk Festival,” he said.

Mr De Santi said there was a chance the festival may be able to apply for a grant from the Federal Government’s RISE Fund and reschedule later in 2022.

Despite these and many other cancellations, two smaller music festivals are going ahead in north Queensland next month. Smaller social gatherings where musicians gather to jam have been held or are set down for later in the year. Woodfordia is also staging its Small Halls tour around Queensland country areas.

Professional arts groups including theatre, ballet, opera and orchestral companies have also suffered from lockdowns and Covid restrictions. Some Queensland arts events have since gone ahead, including ballet, theatre, musicals and the Brisbane Festival. Even so, this press release from Queensland Ballet is just one example of how arts companies have struggled to stage shows since Covid started in March 2020.

Queensland Ballet artistic director Li Cunxin took the decision in May 2020 to postpone the season to 2021. Despite forecasting a 43% drop in revenue for 2020 and a drop in patronage for 2021, Queensland Ballet resumed performances in 2021. As subscribers, we were lucky to have seats for sold out performances of the 60^th Anniversary Gala in March and Sleeping Beauty in June. The company also toured the regions (Tutus on Tour). and has five more ballets scheduled between now and the end of the year.

Government funding is available to support the arts, but it is relatively lean compared to the money invested in professional sport. The Federal Government’s $50 million Arts Sustainability Fund might sound generous, but it is spread over two financial years (about $2m a month). Then there is the hard-to-fathom RISE grant program. This post in The Conversation last September tosses it into the too-little-too-late basket.

For the professional sports sector, it has been mostly ‘business as usual’, although at a considerable financial cost. The NRL decided in early July to move NSW and ACT-based rugby league teams and staff into Queensland at a reported cost of $12m to $15m per month. The NRL funded the move, but it needed formal State Government permission to make it work.

As usual, money talks. It comes down to billion of dollars in sponsorship deals, international broadcast rights, betting agencies and other contractual obligations (not the least of which involves players’ salaries).

The NRL decided to relocate when there were eights weeks of the competition left to run (not including the finals). Now, primarily because of the Covid situation in NSW, the finals are being held in Queensland as well. So by the time the NRL wraps up the season in early October, the cost of what was meant to be a month-long trial may have blown out to $45 million or more.

The good news for Queensland is that local hospitality businesses have benefited from this, with more than 500 people living in hotels and serviced apartments for three months.

The hospitality flows most on ‘Mad Monday’, when players who did not make the finals let their mullets down. Let’s hope that the relatively strong Covid bubble around these 13 visiting teams remains unbreached during coming weeks.

We only need to remember the infamous Illawarra Dragons barbecue debacle to realise what could happen amid the inevitable celebrations and drowning of sorrows that follow a grand final.

Go you Rabbitohs!

Some questions about ‘The Boy from Poowong”

hiroshima-poowong-journalism — Image: Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945. Wikimedia.org, public domain

Bob’s taking a week off as we are booked to perform at a folk festival this weekend. More about that next week. It seemed the right time to give this contribution a run. Norm originally presented this as a talk to a U3A group in Brisbane. We thought it merited wider exposure as the subject is a journalist who reported vital news from the frontline yet was suspected of being a spy. This should remind us that the McCarthy era was alive and well in Australian in the 1950s.

By guest writer NORM BONIFACE

Who was the Australian journalist who married a German Jewess in London in 1938, had one child but was divorced after 10 years? He married again and had three more children who were refused Australian citizenship by Prime Minister Robert Menzies.

He was known for being the first western journalist to report from Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb, and for his reporting from “the other side” during the wars in Korea and Vietnam.

He began his journalism at the start of WW2, during which he reported from China, Burma and Japan and covered the war in the Pacific. After the war, he reported on the trials in Hungary, and later the Korean War, the Vietnam War and on Cambodia under Pol Pot.

The Australian national security department (Commonwealth Security Service, which became Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) in 1949), opened a file on his whole family in the 1940s. Australian security was concerned by his father’s interest in helping Jewish refugees in Melbourne, and his views on the Soviet Union and republican China. A document on his own file dated February 1944 noted:

“This man is a native of Poowong (a small dairy farming town in South Gippsland, Victoria) and his past life has been such that his activities are worth watching closely. He is an expert linguist and has travelled extensively. A comparatively young man who married a German Jewess with a grown family, he seldom misses an opportunity to speak and act against the interests of Britain and Australia.”

Other documents on his file show ASIO was concerned by his “scathing criticism of American imperialism”.*

* Described in Wikipedia these days as: “American imperialism consists of policies aimed at extending the political, economic and

cultural influence of the United States over areas beyond its boundaries. Depending on the commentator, it may include military conquest, gunboat diplomacy, unequal treaties, subsidization of preferred factions, economic penetration through private companies followed by intervention when those interests are threatened, or regime change.”

He is in the Melbourne Press Club’s Hall of Fame, principally because he was the first correspondent to file from Hiroshima after the dropping of the atom bomb and described the effects of radiation sickness and death for the first time. His reports from Hiroshima were heavily censored in the United States, but they helped set the mood for a global era of nuclear deterrence.

The Australian government sent ASIO agents to Japan and Korea to collect evidence, but in early 1954, conceded it could not prosecute him.

In 1955 while overseas, he lost his passport (reported stolen). The Australian government refused to issue a replacement. Though born in Melbourne, Victoria he was refused re-entry to Australia and as a consequence became stateless. Successive Conservative Australian governments between 1949 and

1970 tried to construct a case to prosecute him, but were unable to do so. Cuba came to the rescue and provided him with a passport to permit international travel.

Around 1967, ABC journalist Tony Ferguson filmed an interview with him in Phnom Penh. It is reported that Ferguson said that the general manager of the ABC, Talbot Duckmanton, ordered its destruction.

The Australian government still refused him re-entry for his father’s (in 1969) and later his brother’s (in 1970) funerals. In 1970, attorney-general Tom Hughes admitted to prime minister John Gorton, that the government had no evidence against him. Hughes said that a prosecution for treason under the Crimes Act “cannot be mounted unless the war is a proclaimed war and there is a proclaimed enemy”, and the Australian government had not declared war in Korea or in Vietnam. (NB: Could a similar argument apply in Iraq and Afghanistan in relation to Julian Assange?)

It was not until the Whitlam government came to power in 1972 that he was permitted to return home. A documentary film including interviews with this journalist, entitled “Public Enemy Number One” by David Bradbury, was released in 1981. At the time the ABC refused to show the film. The film expressed the journalist’s views and was criticised in Australia for the coverage of “the other side” in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and posed the questions: “Can a democracy tolerate opinions it considers subversive to its national interest? How far can freedom of the press be extended in wartime?”

From a legal standpoint his lawyers argued that both of these wars were “undeclared”. In fact the former (civil war) remains an open conflict even today (2021).

“He will be remembered by many during the Cold War years as one of the more remarkable ‘agents of influence’ of the times, but by his Australian and other admirers as a folk hero.” – Dennis Warner, war correspondent and historian.

In 2011 Vietnam celebrated his 100th birthday with an exhibition of his work in the Ho Chi Minh Museum in Hanoi.

It is in no doubt that he was a controversial figure during the Cold War years. Some hated him and some loved him. Some said he was a spy in the pay of the Soviet KGB, a secret agent for the

Communist Chinese, North Koreans or North Vietnamese, or a clandestine communist “fellow traveller”. Others said he was an “agent of influence” for one or all of the above.

Or was he just a journalist who had strong views, who saw injustice and hardship, and criticised those he believed responsible for it?

Writing in The Australian in 2008, journalist Greg Lockhart described the previous governments’ actions as “a remarkable breach of the human rights of an Australian citizen” in which it “simply exiled him for 17 years” without any legal reason.

He died in Bulgaria in 1983 at age 72 years.

Wilfred Burchett (1911-1983).

Old newshound investigates digital news

digital-media-classifieds — Image: Bob checks out Pravda on his Chinese smart phone – the go anywhere world

I think I already knew that 80% of Australians were dependent on digital news. Last week I was asked to give a talk at a business breakfast on ‘The past and future of newspapers’. It was a bit of a revelation, drawing on historical data and reflecting on my experience as a regional journalist in the early 1980s. At the time, the old technology (Linotype, lithography, telex, hand subbing) was making way for the computer revolution.

Prior to the mid-1980s, newspapers had an absolute monopoly over classified advertising. If you wanted to sell a car, employ someone, rent a house. hold a garage sale or post a death notice, the classifieds were the only option and they were not cheap.

The supremacy of what Rupert Murdoch once called ‘the rivers of gold’ started faltering, first with competition from specialist trade magazines and then from the fast-developing Internet.

Some brave journalists – call them early adopters – set out to start up their own newspapers. They worked from home and used desktop publishing. Their free newspapers offered ‘classies’ at heavily discounted prices and disrupted the business plan of media giants. The common response was to buy out the upstarts and shut them down.

Once the Internet began to gather momentum, advertisers started to find cheaper ways to sell things. Free on-line markets like Ebay further eroded the traditional profits of newspapers. The big media owners started to buy on-line businesses to compete on both levels. The resulting domination of digital media media advertising, mainly Facebook, has led, in this decade (2010-2021) in particular, to an accelerated decline in print newspapers.

For example, Rupert Murdoch’s once-dominant Herald Sun in Melbourne has come back to the pack. Last week Crikey did a bit of homework on the newspaper’s falling circulation figures (from a peak of 600,000 in 1990). Crikey discovered that the Herald-Sun had fallen to fourth place among News Corp’s Australian mastheads. It also lost its No 1 spot overall behind Nine’s The Age.

As of June 30, the Herald Sun had tumbled to 146,026 subscribers across print and digital products, according to internal figures reported to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Crikey’s Christopher Warren, who, during better times in newspapers, was president of the journalists’ union, wrote:

“The ‘Don’t read the Herald-Sun’ campaigners will be eager to claim credit for the masthead’s fall. They’ve been targeting the paper for its critical coverage of Melbourne’s 2020 lock-down.”

This subscriber-only article prompted much comment on social media from Melbourne folk who apparently do not rate the Herald Sun. Mohamed Mohideen said on Facebook, “Most times they give it free in many places just to say they have a big circulation.

I use it for my cat litter.”

Global data and analytics company Nielsen says 80% of Australians turned to digital news and apps to stay informed in the June 2021 quarter. The total time spent peaked at 1.6 million hours on May 27, when the Victoria Government announced a seven-day lockdown. The next highest, 1.5 million hours, was on June 27, on the first day of the NSW Government lockdown.

Nielsen says the increase was primarily driven by news content consumed on mobile devices. The average daily time spent increased in June by 12%, compared to the same month in 2020. These figures, drawn from a Nielsen press release, are as much as the company is prepared to share. Because of a stalemate with IAB Australia, the trade association controlling on-line advertising, Nielsen stopped making the data public in January and has so far not resumed.

Nevertheless, the Internet being what it is, someone posted the June 2021 ratings on Twitter.

The June data showed ABC on-line in No 1 position with 12.83 ‘unique’ viewers, followed by news.com.au (11.72m), Nine (10.63m), 7News (9.45m) and The Guardian (6.71m) in fifth spot.

News Corp decided back in late 2017 to opt out of Australia’s system of measuring daily circulation, as reported by the Audit Bureau of Circulation. Since then, media analysts and commentators have had to rely on emerging surveys by data companies including Nielsen and Roy Morgan.

Media and marketing website Mumbrella commented that by withdrawing from the Audited Media Association of Australia, News dealt a near fatal blow to the future of print circulation audits in Australia.

News Corp said at the time advertisers should now look to Enhanced Media Metrics Australia (EMMA), which was created by the newspaper industry in 2013 to promote readership numbers, rather than circulation, as the key metric.

Eight years later, (EMMA) was ditched in favour of Roy Morgan’s ‘Total News’ metric.

The first release of Total News readership figures produced by Roy Morgan show that cross platform news reached 97% of the population aged 14+ (20.4 million) in the year to June 30, 2021.
Print (and digital) news saw a 6% increase, compared to the same period last year, now reaching 14.1 million people aged 14+.
Of the 20.4m readers, 1.3 million read newspaper print editions only; 12.8m consumed digital and print and 6.3m digital only.

When you read about the inevitable shift to digital media, it is hard to know how media owners will convince people to pay for it. According to the Australian National University’s Digital News Report 2021, the percentage of people paying for on-line news (13%) has changed little since 2020. Of the non-payers, only 12% say they are likely to pay in the next 12 months. Only a third of Australians are aware that news outlets are less profitable than a decade ago or are concerned about it.

News Corp’s decision in 2020 to rationalise 112 regional titles across Australian has had ongoing ramifications. According to The Guardian, 20 of the regional papers owned by News Corp have been absorbed into the on-line editions of News Corp’s subscriber-only metropolitan newspapers.

Other cost-cutting measures include a decision to no longer deliver print newspapers to far flung regional Queensland (affecting Mt Isa, Longreach, Charters Towers, Emerald and towns in the State’s south-west).

PwC’s Entertainment and Media Outlook Report 2021 says that even before the pandemic, all major publishers were looking towards a predominantly digital news future to compensate for the loss of print circulation and print advertising revenue. Printed circulation revenue dropped by 6.7% in 2020 to A$735 million, and print advertising revenue fell 24% to $882 million.

As the report observed: “All major publishers leaned into rapid transformation and a shift to a a digital world.”

So here’s this week’s homework: are you a NO (newspaper only), a NAD (newspaper and digital) or a DO (digital only). Perhaps you may even be an NRN (never read newspapers). Do tell.

Here’s a few insights into the habits of digital newspaper readers, 54% of whom consume news over breakfast or on the daily commute:

45% use mobile phones as the main device for reading news;
27% of newspaper readers typically read 7+ issues per week;
40% of newspaper readers spend 30 minutes or more reading;
60% spend less than half an hour reading;
10% actually pay for their on-line subscription;
56% of Gen Z (aged 6-24) get their news from social media.

Alarmingly (well, I was alarmed), 10% of people over 75 get their news from social media. Let’s hope it’s not one of those obscure conspiracy-based outlets.

*I wrote about left handers a few weeks back. If you were trying to find the left handed guitar website, here it is: https://leftyfretz.com/

More reading

Time for advance care directives

advanced-care-directive — A Covid worker taking a break. Image by Mario Hagen, pixabay.com

Today I thought it wise to mostly bypass the relentless onslaught of negative news about Covid-19. Instead, let’s talk about Advance Care Directives, Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders and organ donation.

I can’t imagine anyone under 50 who has given these topics a moment’s thought, but read on. Twenty years from now you’ll say to your partner – ‘Remember that piece Bob wrote about DNRs? Maybe the time has come?’

The topic arose as the Covid-19 death toll in New South Wales reached 132, including 80 since early June. The Australia-wide death toll since 2020 is now 989.

Although we have wills and have given each other enduring power of attorney, there’s something about DNRs and Advance Care Directives that sounds, well, permanent.

I came to this topic after counselling someone whose two life-long friends are simultaneously succumbing to terminal illnesses. As we age we start to experience more episodes of friends and relatives dying or being inflicted with infirmity through strokes or dementia.

The advanced care directive gives individuals the power to state what should happen to them should they be in a comatose state.

How many times have you heard someone say ‘if that happens to me, take me out the back and shoot me?’ It’s a fine philosophy. But unless you stipulate in a legal document what you want to happen if you are incapacitated but still breathing, you will remain hooked up to machines that keep you alive.

A common law Advance Care Directive allows you to specify your wishes about future health care and medical treatment. A Directive can only be followed when a person no longer has the capacity to make decisions and the direction relates to the medical treatment or health care situation that has arisen.

DNR orders have been around since the 1970s, but problems remain communicating the wishes of loved ones. For example, a resident of an aged care home is found unresponsive and not breathing. The carer believes the resident has a DNR order in place, but it’s not documented. So they have to decide whether to leave the resident while look for the correct documentation, or stay with the resident and begin CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation)

This example, cited in a National Seniors magazine article, describes it as a medical and ethical problem dogging the aged care sector. While a documented DNR is legally binding, it has to be found before it can be acted upon.

“Nurses report residents being resuscitated even when a DNR order is in place, and the family and the resident (after he survived) came away angry and disappointed he was put through such heroic measures”.

The problem arising from the example cited is that CPR can injure people, especially the frail or old. Worse though, if the person’s heart has stopped beating for a long enough period it can lead to brain damage and a lingering and undignified end of life.

So we all know this; we have all heard similar stories. Yet here we are in our early 70s, still procrastinating about what we want to happen should we be found unresponsive and not breathing.

Those who follow any number of religions may choose to bypass the choice to have a say in what happens in their dying days. While my mother sought such treatment as there was for cancer in the 1960s, she firmly believed the outcome would be “God’s will”.

When you do get around to making a Directive, you may also wish to donate your organs, or those organs which are still in good enough shape to give away.

This is where younger people come into the picture. If you had a bad car accident and died of head injuries, what would you want to happen to your perfectly healthy heart and lungs?

Too dark for a sunny Friday afternoon? Songwriter Loudon Wainwright III put it all in droll perspective in a two and a half minute song, Donations.

“In case of an accident, who could they notify – would it be alright if they notified you?” he begins.

After discussing his lonely life as an ‘unmarried orphan’ he envisages someone fishing out his wallet and looking for a donor card:

“As for my corneas, I don’t care who gets them, but all other organs and parts are for you.”

But Bob, you’re saying, spluttering into your cappuccino or your first cocktail – this is no laughing matter.

No, it isn’t, but neither is lying in a coma, intubated and kept alive by a machine when a signed and witnessed document could save everyone a lot of heartache.

There’s a global debate around the ethics of dealing with DNR orders during a pandemic, where ventilators are in short supply.

The journal Frontiers in Public Health says DNR was only discussed amid the H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009, with clear global recommendations.

“The unprecedented condition of the COVID-19 pandemic leaves healthcare systems worldwide confronting tough decisions. DNR has been implemented in some countries where the healthcare system is limited in capacity to admit, and thus intubating and resuscitating patients when needed is jeopardized”.

Most of the 988 Australians who have died of Covid-19 were in the 70-90+ age groups. In the absence of local research, here’s an example from the US that sheds some light on the prevalence of DNRs among older people.

Of 1270 patients (median age 66), admitted to two New Jersey hospitals over three months in 2020, 640 died with death certificates attributing COVID-19. Of these, 570 (89.1%) had DNR orders.

The proportions were similar in a study carried out by Sheffield University in the UK. We could also have a debate about whether the term ‘resuscitate’ applies in Covid. Intubation is often used not to resuscitate but to keep the patient oxygenated and reduce respiratory distress.

In my teens I had a fair interest in philosophy and comparative religious studies, which probably explains why I am out here today on the agnostic high wire. I remember someone using a word which I misheard as ‘Youth in Asia”. These were the days when research was done in a library using an index card system. Eventually I discovered that euthanasia had nothing to do with rebellious teens in Asia. Fifty years or more later, the notion of assisted dying, or aid-in-dying as it is called in the US, is strongly resisted in many countries. The degree of resistance is usually linked to how devout the population is and the strictures of dogma.

Nevertheless, when faced with a terminal illness diagnosis, many people take whatever treatment or palliative care that is on offer. Towards the end, this is typically morphine and its derivatives or, where it is legal, medicinal marijuana.

Palliative care, which has been in use since the 1960s, skirts between aid-in-dying and palliative sedation.

The boundary is “fuzzy, gray and conflated,” according to David Grube, of the advocacy group Compassion and Choices.

“In both cases, the goal is to relieve suffering”.

Thomas Strouse, a psychiatrist and specialist in palliative care medicine at the UCLA Medical Centre, believes there is a difference.

“The goal of aid-in-dying is to be dead; that is the patient’s goal. The goal in palliative sedation is to manage intractable symptoms, maybe through reduction of consciousness or complete unconsciousness.”

Be that as it may, you are less likely to get what you want without an advance care directive.

More reading;

(NB: Herman Wouk, who is mentioned here. died on May 17, 2019 aged 103)

What the left hand doesn’t know

Last week, Friday the 13^th, I intended to write about International Left Handers’ Day. Apparently it’s been a thing since 1976 – a clever way of making people aware of this difference, at least once a year.

Clearly the organisers of International Left Handers’ Day do not suffer from Triskaidekaphobia, a fear of Friday the 13th.

Phobias are an irrational fear of one or more of hundreds of strange things that induce panic attacks in some people. So you may not be surprised to learn that Sinistrophobia is a fear of left handed people (or objects close to the phobic person’s left hand).

I was made aware of International Left Handers’ Day by my friend and musical collaborator, Silas Palmer. In posting links to social media pages about Left Handedness, he revealed that three of the four members of Melbourne band The Royal High Jinx (he plays drums, keys, accordion and fiddle), are lefties in the literal sense. That is a clear statistical anomaly, as the norm is 10% of the population.

So what does it all mean to the 90% of us who use the right hand for most tasks requiring dexterity?

Well, it could be that you share an abode with a partner or other who is left-handed or have children who turned out that way.

I tried teaching She Who Is Also Left Handed to play guitar but it did my head in. Even now, I just can’t handle watching her chopping up onions or meat with the knife in her left hand. (You’d freak out more if I tried doing it with my right hand. Ed)

There’s been a lot of research into the science and psychology of handedness. Recently, a team at Oxford University found for the first time the role played by DNA. Scientists found the first genetic instructions hard-wired into human DNA seem to be heavily involved in the structure and function of the brain – particularly the parts involved in language. Left-handed people may have better verbal skills as a result.

The research published in Brain magazine concludes that being left-handed (or port-sided), has often led to a raw deal.

“In many cultures being left handed is seen as being unlucky or malicious and that is reflected in language,” said Prof Dominic Furniss, a hand surgeon and author on the report.

“What this study shows is that being left-handed is just a consequence of the developmental biology of the brain, it has nothing to do with luck or maliciousness.” (Despite the word ‘sinister’, which is derived from the Latin for left-handed. Ed)

If you grew up in the 1950s, the education system was not at all in favour of left-handed children. As the teaching of writing became widespread, teachers encouraged right-handedness by (mild examples), tying the left arm behind the back and knuckle-raps for writing with the ‘wrong’ hand. Those that persisted with their left hand were left to cope in a world designed for right handers.

Psychologist Chris McManus has suggested that the Industrial Revolution encouraged this, due to the right-handed design of the machinery in mills and factories

McManus, in his book Right Hand, Left Hand, finds an account from a school near Falkirk, Scotland, in 1880, noting that “eight children had come to school left-handed”. The phrase “had come” implies that they were not allowed to remain so.

With the decline of attempts to convert children, the numbers of left-handers has risen sharply over the course of the 20th century.

Some estimates put it as high as 18% and, as we will see, there are statistical anomalies.

Songwriter and film score composer Dory Previn wrote the definitive song about left-handedness.

The lyrics of Left Hand Lost (from the 1972 album, Mary C Brown and the Hollywood Sign), are infused with Catholic references linking the left hand to evil deeds (as in finding work for idle hands).

Previn, who wrote a good half dozen albums full of self-reflecting songs about mystical kings and iguanas, lemon haired ladies and waking up slow, starts this one with a liturgical chant.

The real attraction to this topic was a chance to name-check a few famous guitarists who have mastered the art of playing ‘Molly Dooker’ (1940s Australian slang).

Most of us would know about Paul McCartney, but there’s also a long list of players (living and dead) including Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Noel Gallagher (Oasis), Annie Lennox, Tommy Iommi (Black Sabbath), David Bowie and Sting. Down under lefties are represented by singer songwriters Eric Bogle and Courtney Barnett, Dick Dale (Bombora), Beeb Birtles (Little River Band), Oscar Dawson (Holy Holy), WA slide guitarist Dave Hole, Kevin Curran (Hail Mary) and Kate Miller-Heidke Band guitarist Keir Nuttall.

Keir plays a 21-year-old Guild Jumbo acoustic that has been customised to suit a left hander.

“It sometimes requires the addition of wooden braces inside the body to compensate for the additional stress from reversing the string order (as well as the nut and bridge),” he explained.

“All of my electric guitars are made left handed. But you often pay more, as the good ones are snapped up by collectors, so the prices are driven up.”

Keir says he started off self-taught so it was too late to switch by the time he realised that it is expensive and frustrating being a lefty.

In an effort to join in on jams at parties, he learned the basic shapes playing a ‘normal’ guitar upside down.

“When I taught guitar I would encourage my students to learn right handed to spare themselves the pain. Guitar is about the co–ordination between both hands, so I believe it doesn’t matter whether your dominant hand is fretting or picking.”

This could be a good time to explain that some left handers (like the aforementioned Dick Dale and the late indigenous singer, Gurrumul), learned to play a conventionally strung guitar upside down.

The website https://leftyfretz.com/ is devoted to left handed guitars and how to play them. But the webmaster has also compiled an impressive collection of left-handed trivia. Like, did we know five of the last nine US presidents (not Trump) were left handed? Mensa, the elite organisation of people with high IQs, claims 20% of its members are lefties.

From this exhaustive list of left handed celebrities, I plucked just two Aussies (Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman). Did you know that 40% of the world’s best tennis players are southpaws (US baseball term)? Rafael Nadal was a right-handed player but taught himself to play leftie to give him an advantage (which it clearly does). Former tennis great turned commentator John McEnroe is also a Portsider.

I noted Simpsons creator Matt Groenig on one of these lists. This may explain why at least four of the characters (Marge Simpson, Bart Simpson, Ned Flanders and Mr Burns) are corrie dukit as they say in some parts of Scotland,

Specialist stores like Ned’s Leftorium do exist. The website www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk operated a shop in London’s west end from the mid-1960s. Management quit the retail space in 1996 and has been operating a home-based internet business ever since. Just in case you were wondering, some of the product lines that do very well include can openers, scissors, spiral notebooks and pens (the latter have curved nibs so the writer can see what’s being written without putting the heel of the hand on still-wet ink).

If you’d like an insight into left handedness, try writing today’s headline with your opposite hand; that is, righties try with the left and vice versa. A fun game for any old Friday afternoon.

Angst in the time of Covid

polio-cholera-covid — Image: A young girl is given oral polio vaccine – Wikimedia CC

Amid reports of doubters who (still) believe Covid is fake news, this week we examine the history of public protest and vaccine hesitancy in times of contagion.

Those 3,000 or so people who mingled on Sydney’s streets a while back, protesting against the Covid lockdown, protesting about vaccines – it’s nothing new.

In the early 19^th century, Joe Public was getting riled up by the spread of cholera and the seemingly poor response by doctors and authorities. There was similar dissent shown when the UK government sought to make the smallpox vaccine compulsory in 1854. There was an ‘anti-mask’ movement during the Spanish Flu and much stigmatisation of polio victims in the first half of the 20^th century.

While the threat of cholera has been eradicated in countries with good drinking water and sanitation, there’s still a lot of it about in parts of Africa and Asia.

Cholera is a severe diarrhoeal disease which, if left untreated, can kill within hours. It is commonly transmitted via food or untreated water, particularly in countries with poor sanitation. Even now if you are travelling to Asia or Africa, your GP will advise getting vaccinated.

And here, dear reader, is where the great divide starts; the inevitable chasm between the majority who accept the science and medical advice and those who don’t. There are those who think the Covid vaccine is a plot to de-populate the planet or a conspiracy to control our minds by implanting microchips. Mine has already succumbed, as you can tell.

The first cholera epidemic (1831) emerged in Russia then somehow moved to Scotland, causing considerable angst and consternation. Just absorb this snippet from Wikipedia and put it in the context of Sydney’s Covid lockdown (and protests).

“A major riot took place in Aberdeen on 26 December 1831, when a dog dug up a dead body in the city. Some 20,000 Aberdonians (two-thirds of the city’s population, although this number has been criticised as an exaggeration), protested against the medical establishment, who they believed were using the epidemic as a body-snatching scheme similar to the Burke and Hare murders of 1828”.

In the summer of 1832, a series of cholera riots occurred in various towns and cities throughout Britain, frequently directed against the authorities, doctors, or both. Of the 72 cholera riots in the British Isles that year, 14 made reference to body-snatchers (“Burkers”).

Burkers were people who believed that medical authorities were acting in co-ordination with the State to purposefully kill and reduce the population (weeding out the poor and weak). Sounds outlandish now, eh?

Despite oral vaccinations being in widespread use, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recorded 499,447 cases of cholera and 2.990 deaths in 2018, spread across 34 countries. About 75% of cholera cases were attributed to Yemen. As the WHO observes, cholera is most likely to re-emerge and spread in countries affected by war and civil unrest and/or where infrastructure has been damaged by natural disasters.

If you roll back 102 years to the Spanish Flu pandemic, it is not hard to uncover instances of public unrest. They ranged from people stigmatising those who had the virus to complaining about having to wear a mask in public.

Historian Humphrey McQueen says mask wearing was strenuously enforced in New South Wales.

“The demand for masks was so extensive that to prevent profiteering, the Commonwealth Government declared butter muslin and gauze to be `necessary commodities’ within proclaimed areas.”

Opponents of mask wearing saw them as breeding grounds for infection or as sapping the community’s ‘vital force’. A ‘Bovril’ advertisement alleged that anti-influenza masks were ‘like using barbed wire fences to shut out flies’.

McQueen said there was widespread support for inoculation throughout the country. By the end of 1919, 25% of people in in New South Wales had received two inoculations against Spanish Flu.

“Melbourne’s socialites reputedly arranged `inoculation parties’ where the guests ‘got the needle’ in turn to slow music and a prize was awarded to the shapeliest arm.”

Vaccine hesitancy is no surprise to David Isaacs, Professor of Paediatric Infectious Diseases, University of Sydney.

Writing in The Conversation, he explored the topic from smallpox through to the Covid vaccine.

“In 1853, concerned by pockets of poor uptake of smallpox vaccine, the British parliament introduced the Vaccination Act, making infant smallpox vaccination compulsory.

“Mandatory vaccination fomented opposition, something we should remember if considering making a modern vaccine mandatory.”
Protests quickly emerged, with more than 80,000 vaccine dissenters marching through Leicester carrying banners, a child’s coffin and an effigy of Jenner.

Eventually, the success of Jenner’s smallpox vaccine silenced the anti-smallpox vaccination movement.

I sometimes look at the smallpox scar on my arm (1955) and wonder why people were so scared of something that could spare you from a disease more contagious than Covid-19, with a 30% mortality rate.

In the first half of the 20th century, the ‘silent killer’, polio (infantile paralysis) swept quickly through the US and other countries.
The US was desperate for a polio vaccine and it got one, but not without an early setback. Virologists Albert Sabin and Jonas Salk, competed to develop the first polio vaccine.
Salk’s vaccine, made from killed polio viruses, was ready for a large clinical trial in 1954.

Five companies applied to mass produce the Salk vaccine, four major pharmaceutical firms and one Californian family firm called Cutter Laboratories. The trial results proved the vaccine worked, so vaccination began in 1955.

But within two weeks, children who received the Cutter vaccine (but not the vaccines made by the four other companies), started to develop paralysis. Of the 200,000 children given the Cutter vaccine, 40,000 developed polio, 200 were paralysed and 10 died.

“The polio vaccination program stalled due to the ‘Cutter Incident’, but the fear of catching polio was so great the public was soon reassured the other vaccines had not caused polio,” Prof Isaacs wrote.

I don’t remember being told this story as a child in the 1950s, lining up in a New Zealand schoolyard for the polio needle. New Zealand was as badly affected as Australia, with five polio epidemics from 1914 to 1954, resulting in many deaths and people my age being left with a lingering legacy.

Polio Australia says there are 400,000 Australian survivors of the childhood polio epidemic. At its peak between 1944 and 1954, the virus killed 1000. The highly contagious virus, spread via faeces and nasal mucous, resulted in poor people and those living in overcrowded situations being stigmatised. Then as now, outbreaks were dealt with by closing schools, borders and public facilities like swimming pools. Victims were quarantined and newspapers published a daily tally of polio cases and deaths.

Prof Isaacs compares these stories with the public concern which arose in 2020 about the Covid vaccines, primarily because of the risk of blood clots. He concludes with the ‘greater good’ argument.

“In Australia, a concentration on individual risk at a single point in time ignores the benefits to the community of widespread vaccine uptake.

“History tells us the public can tolerate risk of harm from vaccines when the severity of the disease warrants the risk.”

I don’t know about you, but my second AZ shot is due tomorrow. I’ll run the risk.

More reading:

The Cutter incident