Category: Friday on My Mind

Four hundred million dollars is a useful amount of money. In the hands of people who know how to distribute money for a good purpose, it could be dispersed in a myriad of ways. They might take up to 20 percent off the top to administer their charities, but that’s a subject for another time.
For example, $400m, equivalent to about a 20% of the Australian Government’s public housing budget, could be used to alleviate homelessness. If evenly distributed, our 105,237 homeless people would each receive about $3,800, which would easily cover a bond and a month’s rent in most Australian cities.
Another example: For $400m you could set up specialised clinics and buy stocks of prosthetic limbs for people in war-torn countries who lost their arms and/or legs to land mines and IEDs. There’d be money left over to pay medical staff to teach people how to walk again.
Or back home, if you had $400m you could negotiate with banks about forming a Blockies Syndicate to buy farms in WA and NSW, the struggling ones currently the target of acquisitive Chinese investment companies.

Now to the Melbourne Cup

If you were wondering where I was going with the $400 million thing, this is what 14 million Australians apparently gamble on the first Tuesday in November trying to pick the winner of a two-mile horse race with 24 runners. Outrageous, isn’t it? Of course, some of that money is recycled, tipped into the wallets of those who backed the winner. Given that the 2015 Melbourne Cup was won by a 100-1 outsider, though, I’d say a lot went into consolidated revenue.
Sarah Michael of the Daily Mail Australia described the race that stops a nation as just that. Research by HR firm Randstad estimated that 77% of Australian workers spend 3.5 hours or more celebrating the Melbourne Cup. The number of full-time employees who call in sick on the Wednesday after is 25% higher than normal. All up, it’s a loss of productivity estimated at $1 billion.
Not all workers treat Melbourne Cup day like the public holiday it is in Victoria. Randstad’s survey found that 15% said they watch the race and participate in office sweepstakes then get back to work. Eight percent said they were too busy to watch the race at all. And (my observation), an unknown percentage spend time and emotional energy alerting people to the cruel, exploitative side of horse racing.

The Victorian Racing Club says the 2013 Melbourne Cup contributed $364.4 in gross economic benefit to the State in 2013-2014. More than half was estimated to be spent in Melbourne department stores, fashion houses, boutiques and shoe stores and on associated events leading up to Cup day. Pubs and restaurants did OK too.
The VRC’s 2014 annual report tells us that 3.2 million home viewers tuned in to the Melbourne Cup and the race was beamed into 163 countries. Annual reports tend to lag behind, so you need to know they are referring to the 2013 cup. It is a fair bet demand for this horse race to be broadcast live around the world will have risen in the ensuing years.
After all, there was only one Australian-bred horse in the 2015 field (Sertorious). Almost half the horses were imported from wealthy stables in England, Ireland and Japan (which made the $50,000 Kiwi-bred winner look all the better). And didn’t you just love Michelle Payne’s speech, in which she not only hung the flag out for female jockeys, but also (correct me if I’m wrong), she did not mention the ubiquitous sponsors at all, though she did wear the cap.

Not everyone in the nation stops

However, the claim that 13.8 million Aussies place bets on the Melbourne cup tends to ignore the 10.4 million who did not bet at all.
The ‘didn’t have a bet’ brigade probably includes infants in nappies, those with religious and/or ethical reasons for not gambling, tight-arses (Aussie slang for thrifty people) and those with pathological addictions who literally had to hide under the doona for the week to stop the ads from online bookmakers penetrating the part of the brain that succumbs to compulsion.

There is a debate about what happens to the 11,000 thoroughbreds who retire from racing each season. In 2013, the Australian Racing Board commissioned a survey of 1,470 horses that had finished racing: 664 (45%) went to stud, 450 (31%) were sold/gifted as pleasure horses and 205 (14%) were returned to their owners. A further 109 (7 percent) died or were euthanised, while just six (0.4 percent) ended up at the abattoirs. Animal rights groups claim that significantly more horses than that go to abattoirs. A 2008 academic study found that 40% of horses at an Australian abattoir had thoroughbred brands. No-one collects data on pleasure horses, who owns them or what happens to them over time, so the numbers are hard to nail down. ARMB survey author Renee Geelen is now working to broaden the study to include thoroughbreds that never get to the race track.

Meanwhile, the use of whips in racing is again under scrutiny. Jockeys are now fined or even suspended for over-use of the whip. The slow motion footage of Michelle Payne (who was riding hands and heels) madly waving her whip near the winning post is shown to be air whipping of the “OMG, I’ve won the Melbourne Cup” kind.

So the once-a-year punters had their flutter. Insurance group Asteron says the average bet in 2014 was $29. (Apparently this amount of money could provide three chooks to a third world family via Oxfam).

Asteron’s Risky Nation report not only discussed our love of the punt, but used actuarial statistics to alert us to our optimistic, yet risk-taking nature. For example, on average, we each gamble $1,641 a year (losing $1,300), yet comparatively few of us take out sickness insurance and the majority have inadequate life cover.

A third of the people Asteron surveyed reckoned paying $420 a year for sickness insurance was “not worth it” and 31% “didn’t know”. Asteron (an arm of Suncorp), says the odds of needing income insurance are 67-1, the odds of being diagnosed with cancer 200-1 and the chances of having a heart attack 427-1. The odds of picking the Melbourne Cup trifecta, however, are 12,144-1.

The TAB said $15.07 million was wagered on the Melbourne Cup trifecta last Tuesday. I could not find out just how many people managed to pick the 100-1 chance to win, chased home by Max Dynamite and Criterion, both at generous odds.
The trifecta paid $26,045. No-one in our street won it.

The choice is ours. Back up on the Sandown Cup tomorrow, run down to your favourite insurer and bump up your life cover, or make a punter-size donation to the charity of your choice.

The Red Cross chose Melbourne Cup Day to ask people for a donation of “$25 or $60” to deliver clean water and sanitation to villages in Burma.

They’ll probably get a better response than the telemarketer who called our Melbourne Cup lunch host at 1.59pm on Tuesday to sell her a new mobile phone.

The prediction in 1940-something that Mother’s new bairn would be born in late October may have caused some angst. In Scotland, those of a superstitious nature would have been in a ‘swither’ (a state of nervous agitation). But “no worries” as we say in Australia. I was born the day before Halloween, with 22 hours to spare.
My friend Ingrid says that apart from it being her birthday, October 31 is a ‘non-event’. But her American friends are horrified, in a swither, even, because of the tradition that deems the 31st to be the date departed spirits return to earth.

The chances of giving birth on Halloween (October 31) are considerably lower than those who drop a sprog on Valentine’s Day (February 14), according to the journal Social Science and Medicine. Researchers studying birth data a week either side of those dates said the chance of giving birth on Halloween dropped by 11.3%, with 16.9% fewer C-sections, 18.7% fewer induced births and 5.3% fewer spontaneous births. On Valentine’s Day, statistics say the likelihood of giving birth rises by 5% and Caesarean births are 12.1% more likely, prompting speculation that women deliberately schedule C-sections to have Valentine’s Day babies.
I have vague early childhood memories of Halloween in Scotland where bairns wear ghost costumes and go door knocking. You don’t get something for nothing in Scotland. You had to sing, dance or recite poetry to be rewarded with a sweetie.

Cultural invasion

Meanwhile, the traditions of Halloween, or to be more precise, the retail world’s version, have been imported to Australia. It’s a relatively new thing, but gathering pace, year by year.
Former colleague Jeff Sommerfeld, also an October 31 baby, says he was spared trick and treaters for years by virtue of living in an inner city apartment, where door knockers rarely strayed. But since he moved to the country, it’s a different matter.
“Last year I was quietly watching television on October 31 when I heard the doorbell ring and to my surprise there were children, escorted by a parent who cried out “trick or treat”. I did not chase these people away, but rummaged through my cupboard and found some lollies that I have for sweet tooth indulgences.
I presented these treats to the people at the door and they left. That is my first and only encounter with Halloween.”
Jeff and I share a dislike of the incursion of American culture into our way of life.
“What is interesting is the hit and miss uptake of American culture,” he says. “We like The Simpsons and 7-Eleven, but have not warmed to Starbucks.”

Retail therapy for some

The brutal truth of the matter is the retail sector needs to cram its calendar with special days that will boost turnover and present opportunities to sell unique stock. It starts with Australia Day and the related merchandise, which includes flags to fly from your car, real flags, Australian flag flip-flops, stubby holders and cigarette lighters, packs of cards, beach towels and sun hats. The fiscal joy for retailers of this strictly Australian event is that unsold stock can be stored away until next year.
Then comes Valentine’s Day – a big thing in Australia with almost 90% of people aged 18-24 said to mark the day of lovers in some significant way. Ibisworld Research estimated that Australians spent almost $800 million on Valentine’s Day in 2014, $42 million of which went on restaurant meals.
There are other imported anniversaries which cynics dub “Hallmark Holidays”, including Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day.

Penny for the Guy

Some of you Brits will notice how I skipped over Guy Fawkes (November 5), a macabre celebration which now barely registers in Australia. It was quite a thing when we were children and the custom is still big in New Zealand, albeit tightly regulated.
The sale of fireworks was banned in Australian states in the 1980s, partly because of injuries and burns, but also because of the risk of bush fires in November.
The custom is still popular in the UK, where people start building bonfires in October while children make “guys” which are traditionally burned on Guy Fawkes’ night. For the benefit of readers under 40, a summary: The Brits foiled a plot to blow up the House of Lords on November 5, 1605. Spanish anarchist Guy Fawkes, who was found guarding a stock of explosives associated with the “Gunpowder Plot”, was arrested, tortured, and executed. Every year thereafter on November 5, effigies are ceremonially burned, with or without Guy Fawkes masks, while fireworks are let off.You may have seen the stylised face mask (pictured above), designed by British artist David Lloyd as part of the 1988 book series V for Vendetta. The mask has become well-known through the movie of the same name. It has also been appropriated by the Hacktivist group Anonymous, worn at protests and rallies, including Occupy Wall Street.
Lloyd created the original mask image for a comic strip written by Alan Moore. He told Rosie Waites of BBC News Magazine the mask had become a convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny.
“I’m happy with people using it, it seems quite unique, an icon of popular culture being used this way,” he said.

The Pagans and the Christians
Before we drive a stake into Halloween for another year, let me tell you about the bizarre ritual that the US blog zine Jezebel dubbed “Slutoween.”
Sydney Morning Herald fashion editor Paula Joye was invited to a Halloween soiree in 2011. After donning a traditionally appropriate outfit, she arrived to find something resembling a Hugh Hefner garden party.
“There was a Cinderella wearing a dress so tiny that it didn’t cover her bottom, but that was lucky because it gave everyone a better view of her white garter belt and fishnets. A latex clad nurse was standing next to the slippery dip talking to a policewoman in hot pants and a ed lace bra. My PG afternoon had suddenly turned Pay Per View.”

The skanky witch takeover is but one diversion from ancient traditions. No wonder there is a Catholic-led campaign to “reclaim Halloween”.
Francine Pirola of www.cathfamily.org says parents are wise to approach the festival with caution. Trick-or-treating can lead children into a “mind-set of greed and an expectation of free handouts”, she wrote in 2012. “Further, the association of Halloween with pagan ritual can feed an unhealthy fascination with the occult.”
Some Christian families want to redeem Halloween from these unsavoury associations because of its links to ancient traditions. Halloween is, after all, the evening before All Saints Day which the Church celebrates on November 1st. All Souls Day follows on November 2nd, when Catholics pray for all the dead.

An apple a day

Meanwhile, Mr Sommerfeld has stocked his country larder for this year’s trick and treaters.
“I intend to answer the door this year and present any children with a fresh apple. I think the spirit of giving is important, so if we are going to be dragged into another American cultural tradition, let us shape it and give children something that is good for them, rather than things that add to obesity and dental issues.”

The following should not be construed as medical advice. If itching persists, see your doctor.

One Sunday morning in October 2013 I woke early with a weird sensation behind my ear. Half asleep I picked the tick off that was embedded in my scalp. Less than a minute later my body erupted in a full-scale hives-like rash, my lips began tingling and I began wheezing. I jumped in the shower to see if that would ease the dreadful itching (I had angry red welts all over my body). I began to feel quite ill; hyperventilating and feeling light-headed. She Who Took Me To Hospital looked about as worried as I’d ever seen her. Not that I was caring much. By then I was feeling fit to pass out.
At Maleny Soldiers Memorial Hospital, known for its focused care and attention to patients (and a missing apostrophe), staff swung into action. The nurse on duty administered antihistamines and summonsed the doctor. The doctor ordered up Ventolin as he was not happy with the way my lungs were sounding. While that was happening, various nurses and doctors wandered back and forth to see how I was doing, all the while monitoring my blood pressure. The doctor returned and gave me an injection of adrenalin. Instantaneously the rash disappeared, my blood pressure started to normalise and I began to feel well enough to start contemplating my new-found status as being allergic to Ixodes holocyclus, or the paralysis tick.
As a precaution, I was admitted to hospital, remaining for the next 36 hours, during which time I was carefully monitored. The house concert we’d planned for that afternoon passed me by. Our guest musicians, Sarah Calderwood and Paul Brandon played on, and after the gig called in to visit me, along with a couple of friends who’d come for the house concert and found me missing in action.
Hospitals around South-East Queensland reported a higher than normal incidence of tick anaphylaxis that summer. A tick attack in an allergic individual is serious business. An allergic reaction causes the blood pressure to drop rapidly. The issue is that you could lose consciousness before being able to get help. If your airways swell up and become blocked, well, it’s game over.
It’s a bit hard avoiding ticks when you live on the eastern seaboard, as they are commonly found from Cape York to Tasmania and up to 30 kms inland.
The tick is also found in the Australian Capital Territory and a similar tick is found around Launceston in Tasmania. The common hosts are bandicoots, possums, brush turkeys, kangaroos and koalas.

A new way of life

I was sent me on my way with two Epipens and careful instructions on how to use them (as was She Who Hopes She Never Has to Stick a Needle in the Scribe) and a prescription for oral cortisone. It was also suggested I keep antihistamines handy as well as Lyclear, which is an ointment used to treat scabies. The drill is to carefully inspect your body for ticks after gardening or bushwalking (I do lots of both), and if you find one, dab some Lyclear on it and later remove it with tweezers or patented tick removers.

Sorry, I had to stop writing just then and go into the bathroom to inspect my nether regions. You?

Ticks can roam around on your body for up to two hours before latching on in body crevices, armpits, groin, behind the knees, on the head, behind the ears and on the back of the neck under the hairline.

The tick goes through four life stages over the course of a year. The following is a precis from an excellent website maintained by Tiara (Tick Induced Allergies Research and Awareness).

Ticks are commonly found in wet sclerophyll forests and temperate rainforests. The mature female will lay 2,500 to 3,000 eggs in moist leaf litter before she dies. Only a few of these eggs survive to adulthood. The eggs hatch as six legged larvae which must obtain a blood meal before they can moult to the next stage. These are the tiny ticks that show up on your body as itchy red welts. The larva climbs to the top of the nearest vegetation and waits for a passing host. The larva feeds on the host’s blood for four to six days, then drops off the host and moults to the eight-legged nymph stage. Nymphs seek a further blood meal for four to eight days before moulting to the adult tick. Adult female ticks feed for 10 days, drop off the host and then lay eggs over several weeks.

(Sorry I just had to duck upstairs for a quick shower. You?)

Before my body decided it had enough of ticks and tried to reject their toxins, I had numerous incidents where large ticks had embedded themselves in various parts of my body. I was savvy enough to know the tick should be killed before removal. If you try to forcibly remove the tick while it is still alive (guilty as charged), there is a risk the tick will release a toxic dose of saliva into your body. Even if you’ve had a mild to moderate reaction, the next time could be more serious.
By far the strangest allergic reaction to a tick is an allergy to mammalian flesh as a result of a prior tick bite. This used to be an extremely rare condition, but sadly it is now more common than either doctors or their patients would like. Imagine having to become a vegetarian or restrict your diet to fish and chicken because eating red meat makes you desperately ill?
I hear a few of you scoffing – check out this Catalyst programme from February.
The key to avoiding a tick bite is precautions. Some people react by moving somewhere else. But if you think about the distribution, moving is probably futile, unless you plan to move to the desert.
This is not an exhaustive list of precautions but contains the handiest hints I know.
• Wear light-coloured, long sleeved shirts and tuck your trousers into your socks or wear gumboots when gardening or bushwalking;
• wear a wide-brimmed hat;
• Sensitive individuals should apply personal insecticide to exposed flesh and on their gardening/walking clothes;
• Remove gardening/bushwalking clothes outside the house and immediately have a shower, carefully inspecting your body;
• Some people put gardening clothes in the dryer on hot for 10 minutes, supposedly to kill any ticks loitering there;
• Mow lawns frequently and be aware that ticks can crawl up your pant legs;
• If you are allergic, buy an insulated baby bottle pouch and carry your Epipen at all times. Replace every 12 months;
• Guinea fowl and chooks eat ticks. But chooks destroy gardens and guinea fowl have a braying call that might annoy you or your neighbours.
There are electronic gadgets that emit ultrasonic sound that is said to repel ticks up to 3 metres. I bought one last year from the chemist and can report that I’ve not had a tick latch on to me when I’ve been wearing it.
You probably guessed by now I’ve been lured out to the garden to take control of the spring weed growth. So far the ticks don’t seem to be as bad as the bindi-eyes – but it’s early days.

Only the NT News would dare describe this week’s dramatic political story with the headline: “Rich dude becomes PM”. Such is the Darwin-based tabloid’s sense of independence, the leadership spill story was pushed ‘below the fold’ by a court story. Given the over-the-top live coverage assigned to the breaking story, the NT News evidently decided to play the story for laughs.
There was much room for satire and cruel amusement as social media lit up with one hastily-made meme after another (a meme being a picture with irreverent words). While the narcissistic nature of Australian power politics is no joking matter, it was predictable that some of the media coverage would focus on a list of Tony Abbott’s gaffes. The most recent was when Abbott and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton were caught on an overhead mike making thoughtless jokes about Pacific nations and climate change. Alas poor Tone, he was always putting his foot in it: he was caught luridly winking at a radio interviewer while talking to a sex worker; few veterans are likely to forgive him saying “shit happens” about the death of a soldier; not to mention his misuse of the word “suppository’ and the farcical dubbing of the Queen’s hapless husband, Sir Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, when inexplicably re-introducing knighthoods.
Even Rupert Murdoch thought that was naff.

Five PMs in five years

While Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s fifth prime minister in five years (KR is counted twice), is enjoying his brief honeymoon, perhaps we need to be reminded of the duplicitous nature of power politics.
There have been 17 inter-party leadership spills since 1981, many of them brought about by the incumbent’s poor opinion polling. Let’s not forget naked ambition and treachery.
Australia stands in an unusual position with our incumbent Prime Minister ousted by party room spills on four occasions since 2010. This has caught the attention of international media, as one might expect.
As Andrew Coyne wrote in The National Post, the leader of the party in Canada’s Parliament is chosen by an entirely different group of people (a broad cross-section of Party members).
“(It is) a body that is brought together for the sole purpose of voting, and having voted, disappears. Under the Westminster model, the leader is accountable to caucus; under our system (ie the Canadian system- Ed.) the leader is effectively accountable to no one.”
Coyne asked his Canadian readers if they really wanted the kind of ‘manic leader-shopping’ Australians had just gone through? From his desk somewhere near Toronto, he sent this warning to Malcolm Turnbull:
“A big part of Australian Labor’s defeat at the last election was attributed to voter weariness with the party’s leadership shenanigans.”

Onion-eating eccentric

Amelia Lester in the New Yorker saw Abbott as someone who “exhibited a feckless machismo, which often verged on eccentricity”.
Lester mercilessly ran through all of these macho eccentricities and more, including his bizarre little lunch, chomping on a raw onion when visiting a Tasmanian farm.
Soon after the result of the dramatic leadership challenge was announced, #putoutyouronions was trending on Twitter. Few Australian Prime Ministers have attracted such universal scorn.
But Abbott wasn’t just the butt of other people’s jokes.
Whether you agree or not, he didn’t muck about when implementing core pre-election promises. Abbott was opposed to the Labor Party’s implementation of a price on carbon, repealing it on his first day in office, telling the world that climate change was “faddish”.
It was his stand on boat people, however, which upset the international community and deeply divided communities at home. Earlier this month The New York Times castigated Abbott for overseeing “a ruthlessly effective effort to stop boats packed with migrants, many of them refugees, from reaching Australia’s shores”.
“His policies have been inhumane, of dubious legality and strikingly at odds with the country’s tradition of welcoming people fleeing persecution and war,” The NY Times editorial said.

Two lost fish swimming in a fish bowl

In all then, Monday’s leadership challenge, the second for Abbott in seven months, should have come as no surprise.
The past 15 years have been notorious for unrest at the top, as opinion polling, the 24-hour news cycle and the relentless clamour of uncensored social media turned Australian political life into a giant fish bowl.
Don’t fart – someone will see the bubbles.
The list of Tony Abbott’s gaffes, coupled with inexplicable “captain’s calls” and tardiness in resolving the Bronwyn Bishop saga amounted to a lot of bubbles.
Political analysts with long memories are making comparisons between Abbott and Billy McMahon, another veteran politician who did not deal well with life at the helm.
McMahon became PM in March 1971 after a leadership spill between him and incumbent John Gorton resulted in a tie. Gorton saw the tie as a vote of no confidence so resigned, leaving McMahon to lead the Libs into a general election in 1972. It was McMahon’s bad luck to be taking on a consummate young politician by the name of Gough Whitlam who had helped Labor to a clear lead in the polls.
Meanwhile, McMahon’s approval ratings had dwindled to 28% and his press profile was abysmal. British psephologist (election expert) David Butler said he could not recall a Prime Minister in any country being “so comprehensively panned”. This was despite McMahon’s record of (a) setting up the first Department of Aboriginal Affairs and (b) extracting Australia from the Vietnam War.
It was said at the time that McMahon simply “did not look or sound like a Prime Minister”. Forty-odd years later and it seems Tony Abbott got the flick for much the same reasons.

Spills aplenty

A Wikipedia summary of leadership spills shows how the trend accelerated in the 21st century, with consecutive challenges in 2003 to oust Simon Crean as Labor leader. It worked and Mark Latham became leader until the next election. Then Kevin Rudd in December 2006 challenged and beat Kim Beazley as Labor leader.
In the intervening years there were changes at the top of the Liberal Party too, first with Brendan Nelson, toppled by Malcolm Turnbull in 2008 (ah, you’d forgotten that, eh?). A year Later Turnbull was challenged as Opposition Leader by this Abbott chap, who at that time won 42-41.
Then we fell into the three-ring circus of the Rudd/Gillard era, but all had been relatively silent until February 9 this year when a motion to bring about a leadership spill in the Liberal Party was defeated 61–39. Seven months later, Malcolm Turnbull challenged Tony Abbott and won the vote 54-44.
A close vote ensures Turnbull will have a difficult time turning the ship of state around, even assuming he is unlikely to stray far from party policy. After all, he’s been there all the time Abbott was ostensibly calling the shots.
We wait, Facebook memes at the ready, for his first gaffe, or more hopefully, his first statesman-like act:
• A free vote on gay marriage;
• The re-introduction of solar and wind farm subsidies;
• The protection of remote Aboriginal communities;
• Higher intakes from refugee camps;
• Increased foreign aid to war-torn countries;
• The scrapping of Knighthoods;
• Re-instatement of the onion as a common garden vegetable.

I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
And in-flu-enza.

So went a children’s skip rope ditty of 1918-1919, when Spanish Flu swept around the world and knocked off more people than the so-called Great War. Isn’t that so like children; to make light of something so awful they can’t comprehend it.

My free range imagination set off on this journey when confined to bed with something approaching flu, but probably not. After all, I had the vaccination in April. It started with a headache, a dry, irrepressible cough which brought on asthma, hot and cold spells and low-grade aches and pains.
The asthmatics among us would agree that we soon know if a virus inhabits our respiratory system. It’s never much fun. I’m also a bit of a hypochondriac, but you knew that. But if you see me out and about this weekend and I’m wearing a gauze face mask, stay well away (more about masks later).

The media is fond of a good plague story – they daren’t call it a plague, as that would be inaccurate and irresponsible, but the word epidemic often gets an airing. At the end of August 2015, Queensland Health had reported 18,500 cases of influenza including 10,000 cases of Brisbane B, which last emerged in 2008.

News.com.au reported that Queensland was “in the grip of its worst flu season on record”. They obviously forgot about the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-19 that killed between 20 and 40 million people worldwide. The Spanish Flu or “La Grippa” came on really fast, invading the lungs, leading in many cases to pneumonia and death.
According to the Australian Disaster Management website, Australia fared relatively well, by enforcing strict quarantine regulations. Nonetheless, the Spanish flu killed 12,500 Australians, mostly younger people (ages 15 to 35) at a time when Australia’s population was just five million. (The picture above of nurses in Brisbane circa 1919 comes from the John Oxley Library).

World Health Organisation warnings about Influenza B last September came too late to include it in the free vaccination program. There have been 15,403 cases of influenza in Queensland this year, about 5,000 more than last year. Of those, more than 10,000 have been Influenza B, compared with just 1161 last year.

Another 3,000 cases in the last week of August took the number of people diagnosed with influenza to 18,500, making it the worst year since the swine flu in 2009. Still, that is only 0.39% of the State’s population of 4.7 million, so let’s not panic yet.

A musician friend had just left on a cruise ship for a holiday when she became ill. Soon after, she was diagnosed with Brisbane B and confined to her cabin for the duration. That’s just plain unlucky, but when you catch a genuine case of flu, you won’t resent too much being confined to quarters. Bed rest is really the only cure.

In between the genuine cases of influenza, which can be isolated as this or that strain, come a range of head colds and what we Aussies call lurgies, wogs or dog’s disease. Last time I came down with a rapid onset lurgie, a young Asian doctor who used to practice around here checked me out and pronounced: “It’s just a wirus – antibiotics are no use. Go home go to bed, take aspirin and drink lots of fluids.”
Good advice. It crossed my mind that I probably infected some of the people who were in the waiting room at the time, unless of course they already had a ‘wirus’.

There’s a fair gap between a bad head cold, a non-specific virus and influenza. Each can make you feel like putting a pillow over your face and pressing down hard.
I usually keep good health in this regard, but our passion for rugby league led us to Lang Park Stadium last Thursday night, along with 44,000 other people. Then we were stuck on a packed train back to Caboolture, breathing in all those dubious germs. I didn’t think of it at the time, but I’m thinking about it now.

Not that I want to blight your weekend, but here’s a sense of what it was like in 1918, living with ‘La Grippa’. Molly Billings of Stanford University Department of Human Virology writes:

“The effect of the influenza epidemic was so severe that the average life span in the US was depressed by 10 years. The influenza virus had a profound virulence, with a mortality rate at 2.5%, compared to the previous influenza epidemics, which were less than 0.1%. The death rate for 15 to 34-year-olds of influenza and pneumonia were 20 times higher in 1918 than in previous years (Taubenberger). People were struck with illness on the street and died rapid deaths.”

The curious thing about influenza is that it fades away – the strain mutates into something less crippling, less contagious and people get better. That certainly happened towards the end of 1919.

When Florence Nightingale (not) and I were in Hong Kong for a few days, it seemed every second person was wearing a gauze face mask. At first, I assumed this was to protect them from the appalling air quality, as pollution from coal fired power stations and motor cars drifts in from mainland China.
A friend who lives in HK says it is also to stop the spread of colds or flu generally, or in the case of the only well person in a household, it’s worn for personal protection.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) says it is neutral on general mask-wearing “because there is hardly any evidence either way”.

Little research has been done to see if wearing masks helps protect people. The ECDC says that in some societies, e.g. in the Far East, masks are worn a lot in the influenza season, “but they still get plenty of influenza”.

As any general nurse can tell you, thorough hand washing is the best protection against spreading influenza or being infected. ECDC recommends using hand-washing to reduce influenza transmission and alcohol gels work against the influenza as well. So good general hygiene, hand-washing, and using and disposing of tissues is important.

Many people around here swear by ‘hippy cures’ – echinacea, olive leaf extract, ginseng, nasal rinsing or throwing a towel over your head and inhaling pine/menthol vapour. No better or worse than over the counter medications. A rum toddy with lemon and honey and two aspirin on the side is another option. Make it a double.

Meanwhile, I’m choosing to stay in bed and drink lots of fluids, as advised. For distraction I’m reading the New Internationalist’s coverage of Syria and its myriad woes. The irony does not escape me that I will soon get better and return to my cushy life.

There’s a tradition in the folk music scene at folk festivals and in selected pubs where singers and musicians gather and play, surrounded by those who sit on the fringes, tapping their toes in time to the music.
The folk session (photo by Steve Swayne) is wedded to repetitive tunes, played by whoever turns up with whatever instrument they have, and interspersed with songs which tell of the plight of the urban proletariat. The former are usually Irish or Scottish tunes which commonly have an A part (played twice) and a B part (played twice). The tune is repeated until whoever is leading the session switches to another tune and another key.
The stridently political song, tending as far to the left as one can possibly go, is another matter. Someone will break into the cycle of diddly diddly tunes when the players are sitting back, supping their pots of Guinness and thinking of what to play next.

Rebel songs

The classic World Turned Upside Down (sometimes called The Diggers) by English songwriter Leon Rosselson often turns up at sessions. It sounds like it was written in the era in which it is set.
“In sixteen forty-nine to Saint George’s Hill
A ragged band they called the Diggers came to show the people’s will
They defied the landlords, they defied the law
They were the dispossessed, reclaiming what was theirs.”
So it goes – they came in peace to dig and sow, to work the land in common and make a “common treasury for all”.
Now that you understand the socialist rhetoric, you will either spend all weekend in the session tent or not go there at all.
The closest I came to this genre was The Almost Armageddon Waltz, written in 1980 when the Russians invaded Afghanistan and the world once again was thrust into anxiety about the possibilities of nuclear war.
I penned a corny but catchy chorus: “Armageddon, Armageddon, Armageddon out of here” which led to a song writing award, a run of T-shirts and requests (still, after all this time). The references to Malcolm Fraser, the Holden Kingswood and hi-fi gear quickly dated. Unhappily, Afghanistan is still a basket case.

Why censoring does not work

Happily, authoritarian attempts to censor politically or morally ‘incorrect’ songs usually backfire and lead to the rebellious authors developing a cult following. The Guardian reported this week that an environmental scientist working for a Canadian government agency has been suspended and will be investigated for recording a protest song about the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.
Harperman was written by Tony Turner, who worked at Environment Canada and is, in his spare time, “a mainstay on the Ottawa folk music scene”.
The song contains lyrics like “no respect for environment / Harperman, it’s time for you to go”, and “no more cons, cons, cons / we want you gone, gone gone”.
Crikey, as we say down here, if he (Turner) didn’t write the song in work hours, where’s the problem?

Chewin’ the fat again

Governments over many eras have elected themselves the guardians of people’s morals, if not their freedom to speak out when not entirely pleased with the way things are going. Nazi Germany is an example of how this can be taken to extremes.
In 1960, officials in Adelaide blocked American satirist Tom Lehrer from performing until he agreed to omit “morally corrupting” songs from his repertoire.
Lehrer’s funny and sacrilegious anthem “The Vatican Rag” attracted a lot of complaints when first aired in 1967. An academic paper by Jeremy Mazner says Lehrer was relatively unaffected by the complaints about lines like this:

“There the guy who’s got religion’ll/Tell you if your sin’s original/If it is try playin’ it safer/Drink the wine and chew the wafer/Two four six eight/Time to transubstantiate”)

“It was kind of fun to see them squirm,” Lehrer remembered.

A teacher in Putnam Valley, New York, was fired after playing The Vatican Rag to his seventh grade class as an example of satire. The teacher was eventually reinstated.
Lehrer the piano-playing Harvard math professor who gave up songwriting and performing in 1965, told Tony Davis of the Sydney Morning Herald in a 2003 interview that there was no place now for his kind of humour.

“I’m not tempted to write a song about George W.Bush. I couldn’t figure out what sort of song I would write. That’s the problem: I don’t want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them.”

Lehrer’s granted the SMH a rare interview because he wanted to reflect on his 1960 Australian tour, the “highlight of his life” when he was banned, censored, mentioned in Parliament and threatened with jail.
Brisbane was the problem town.
“The chief of police said I couldn’t sing the Boy Scout song, particularly.”
Be Prepared! includes revised Scout pledges: “Don’t solicit for your sister, that’s not nice/ Unless you get a good percentage of her price.”

I’m not awful, I’m a satirist

Satire often goes over people’s heads, especially those who have a literal sense of humour and don’t grasp irony; the ones who thought Randy Newman was being racist and offensive writing songs like Red Necks and Short People. Eric Bogle copped the same kind of misdirected abuse over “I Hate Wogs” where he adopted the persona of a bigoted Ocker.
It also works in reverse. Lancashire punk band The NotSensibles wrote a satirical song “I’m In love With Margaret Thatcher”, which was inadvertently adopted by some of Thatcher’s supporters.
The Guardian assembled a lengthy list of songs of politics and protest in 2009 including three Beatles tunes, many Dylan songs and things you would expect to find in a list of this nature, like Bob Marley’s Redemption Song and Billy Braggs’ Between the Wars. Eric Bogle is the only Australian on the list for And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda.
Maybe what Lehrer said was true – there’s little room now in mainstream music for songs of protest. I found only 17 songs on the list from the last 15 years.
It can be a career-defining/defying moment when a mainstream band decides to take a stand (to wit the Dixie Chicks’ Not Ready to Make Nice), which sharply divided their audiences and led to the musical equivalent of book burning).

There are Aussie rebels too

The Guardian recognised the subjective nature of the list, encouraging people to post their own favourite rebel songs. There is an enduring history of Australian songs of this ilk. Start with Tex Morton’s 1930s story of Sergeant Small harassing swaggies riding the rails, divert through the folk catalogue (e.g. Judy Small, John Dengate) then progress to popular music (Redgum, Midnight Oil, Paul Kelly, Warumpi Band and Kev Carmody), through to rebels of today like Xavier Rudd and John Butler.

It would be comforting to think that a public servant working for a government could write and perform a song like The Lurkers’ Mining Man without fear of reprisal.
But in this political climate, I doubt it.

Postscript: She Who Also Sometimes Writes (SWASW) has penned her own piece about the loveable, eccentric folk scene, which you can find here: