New Year Archives - thegoodwills.com

Digressions – Bob’s top gripes for 2023-2024

Yes folks, it’s a list, and not just any old list. This one selects (just some) of the things that gave the writer an urge to pen ‘outraged father of one’ letters to newspapers in 2023. All are ongoing issues in 2024.

Cash is King

Kudos to our local Credit Union teller who happily counted bags of coins and deposited them in our respective bank accounts. Some banks are no longer providing such service options, claiming to be ‘ cashless’.

We have encountered (as have you), instances of retail outlets (restaurants and bars) who refuse to take cash. Last time I looked up the legislation, cash was still ‘legal tender’. Did you know that includes one and two-dollar notes, phased out in 1984 and 1988 and replaced with the very same coins we took to the Credit Union. Go figure.

While it may be very old school to secret coins away in a container for use at Christmas, this year She Who Hoards bought a bottle of Mumm and a quality red with the proceeds. It’s called saving.

Help yourself check-outs here to stay

Major Australian supermarket chains will probably persist with their policy of encouraging customers to scan their own groceries at self-service check outs. I am one (and we are many) who refuse to do this.

The major chains will tell you they are employing more people than ever to cope with new shopping options (on-line delivery). But clearly, fewer staff are required when a store has (for example) eight service check outs and eight self-service stations. There is usually at least one employee in the self-service areas, ostensibly to ‘help’ people but more likely to spot opportunistic theft.

Large retailers including Booths (UK), Walmart and Costco (US) are reportedly winding back their self-service options. Booths is removing self-service check outs at 26 of its 28 stores, saying its customers rejected them as ‘unreliable and impersonal’.

News Ltd quoted a Marks and Spencers executive that self-service check outs lead to what he called ‘middle class shoplifting’, that is theft by people who normally would not dream of it but are motivated by an “I’m owed it” attitude.

Shoplifting is up 20% in Australian supermarkets, although there is no break-down as to how much of that is down to self-service customers leaving stores without scanning some items. Supermarkets have always had losses due to staff pilfering, shoplifting and fresh food wastage. The industry calls it ‘shrink’ and it’s factored in to financial operations.

Homeless, diamonds on the soles of their shoes (not)

If anyone’s keeping a list of things various governments promised to do about housing, prioritising the homeless is not one of them.

It’s a weight of numbers thing, true, and homeless people are more likely to gravitate to States where it is possible to live outdoors most of the year. The Census figures are damning enough, but already this snapshot taken every five years is hopelessly out of date.

The Census (2021) revealed that on any given night, 122,494 people in Australia are experiencing homelessness. One in seven are children under 12 and 23% of people experiencing homelessness are aged between 12 and 24. Homelessness Australia has a more pessimistic (or realistic) picture, but it too is dated. In 2021-22, 272,700 people were supported by homelessness services (source Institute of Australian Health and Welfare). In 2021-22, a further 105,000 people (300 per day) sought help but were unable to assisted because of shortages of staff, or accommodation or other services.

https://homelessnessaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Homelessness-fact-sheet-2023-1.pdf

What’s been done about this? Not much and even if it could be described as ‘better than the last guys’, governments are playing catch up. The stories that make headlines are homeless camps (under bridges and freeway ramps) being broken up by officialdom.

McCrindle Research reports that the average full-time annual earnings in Australia is $97,510 with household gross annual income at $121,108.

The majority of rental accommodation is expensive and in demand. House prices keep rising and interest rates are higher now than when mortgages were negotiated when rates were low. In November, 552,000 people were listed as unemployed. And don’t get me started on the plight of single pensioners who don’t own their own home.

Victorian Councillors surveyed about ‘perceptions of corruption’

In May the Independent Broad-Based Anti-Corruption Commission (IBAC) emailed all 632 Victorian local government Councillors. They were invited to participate in a perceptions of corruption survey. Reminder notices were sent over a three-week period to those who had not completed the survey. In total, 131 Councillors participated in the survey, representing a response rate of 21%. (Councils where Administrators were in place were excluded).

Almost 75% of respondents thought corruption was a problem in Victoria; 59% thought it was a problem among elected officials. Three-quarters agreed that some elected officials behaved inappropriately or unethically, but this did not necessarily extend to corrupt behaviour.

(Victorian MPs were also asked to complete the survey with similar findings and level of engagement).

Readers should be aware that this issue is not just about Victoria and Councils should expect scrutiny in an election year.

What good is the UN?

According to a databank maintained by Sweden’s Uppsala University, there have been 285 armed conflicts since the end of World War II. That doesn’t include the latest war between Israel and Gaza and who is to say there won’t be more before 2024 is out? The United Nations, previously the League of Nations, is supposed to keep the peace. The UN’s latest moves to stop the war between Palestine and Israel have so far been futile. There was a vote for a ceasefire, but it wasn’t a binding resolution. Both sides have since kept exchanging missile fire as the occupying force advanced. A United Nations Security Council bid to enforce a ceasefire was watered down to allow aid to get through to Gaza. Meanwhile, Houthi Rebels from Yemen (reportedly backed by Iran), have stepped up attacks on commercial shipping vessels travelling through the Red Sea. This too is a response to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

Yes, I mean no

Sydney Mayor Clover Moore was on ABC television yesterday claiming that 70% of Sydney people voted Yes in the October referendum (remember that?). I don’t remember the context but found this statistic in direct contrast to the Federal seats of Maranoa (where we live) and Fisher) where we used to live. In both these electorates the Yes vote was less than 20% and the No vote actively supported and sanctioned by sitting Federal members. Incidentally, Clover Moore defends the $6 million+ cost of Sydney setting off 50,000 fireworks at midnight as great international PR. This comes under the ‘I’m just going to leave this here’ category of social comment.

I could go on (the quality of on-line captions for the hearing-impaired, editors who organise lists into alphabetical order, hypocritical betting ads, the deterioration of ABC News (sliding rapidly into viewer-provided content and infotainment), venues that expect musicians to play for ‘exposure’, the worrying swing to the populist form of government (in Holland, Brazil and New Zealand…)

Most of all, we wish you all a Trump-free world in 2024.

New Year rolling relentlessly along

My friend Joy sent one of Jacquie Lawson’s life-affirming animated cards for New Year, a positive message delivered as a calendar, pages flipping to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. It was a northern hemisphere theme, but the message was universal – the wonders of nature.

As for last week’s flippant item about fluffy news, the opening days of 2023 delivered anything but. At New Year drinks, assembled guests inevitably began talking about the bad news of preceding days and weeks. The Tara shooting is still (and probably always will be), bewilderingly pointless. There are Court cases to come involving a traffic accident in which three people died. There’s the home invasion which left a young mother dead and her husband injured. There were drownings, fatal car accidents and a helicopter crash that killed four people.

Where’s a cat up a tree story when you need one?

For my part, I’ve been quite busy as one of my pro bono jobs is editing the U3A Warwick newsletter, an 18-page publication (due today). I was chasing up sponsors who booked advertising space. I made up an ad in Publisher and sent it for approval, quietly invigorated by finding that I can be multi-skilled at my age.

Mind you, race walker Heather Lee (96), could teach me a thing or two. ABC Breakfast interviewed Heather (a lone, good news contribution). She was lamenting that she can no longer compete in her age group – because she’s the only one.

Watching Heather briskly walking, arms swinging, made me prise myself out of the recliner, stretch my hammies and vow to return to the gym. If you make New Year resolutions, that should be Number 1, really. If we’re not fit and active, chances are we’ll soon be on a wheelie walker or in a wheelchair.

Neither of these options appeal to me, but at 70+ with diagnosed brittle bones, I have made getting fitter than I am a priority.

It’s all about exercise, stretching, lunging, eating good food and drinking lots of water; it’s also about brisk walking, not quite the Heather Lee standard but not dog-walking pace either.

The realisation that I was not as fit as I have been came while trudging around the Woodford Folk Festival site, up hill and down, on roads which had been knocked about by rain. I had not been to Woodford for some years. It was always tiring, no matter how fit you were. One year at Woodford, realising that the tiredness comes from the endless walking from one venue to another, I took up residence at one venue and stayed there for the duration. It sure was better than catching the last song of John Butler’s set or not being able to get into the tent when you wanted to be in the front row.

Woodford, with its teeming thousands milling about, is a place where you might meet someone you know and then again, not. In previous years, it seemed as if our age group (the over-60s) was well represented. This year, it was like being at Splendour in the Grass. Most attendees seemed to be in the 18-29 age group and of course there were kids and babies everywhere.

I was one of the few men I spotted wearing jeans. Most were clad in shorts, long hippy pants or on occasions, sarongs. Hardly anyone wore a hat (Albo did), and I guess they will pay for it later.

We were there for the 9am tribute to the extraordinary folk singer, comedian and writer John Thompson, who died in February 2021, aged 56. His widow Nicole Murray put the show together with the help of friends Fred Smith and Ian Dearden. They covered a lot of territory in just 50 minutes; there were performances from singers who’d been in bands with John, a special Morris Dance to the tune of his song ‘Brisbane River’ and a spooky rendition of The Parting Glass by the Spooky Men’s Chorale. As director Stephen Taberner told the full-house crowd, John had at one point joined the Spookies for a tour of the UK. If you did not know of John, you might have seen him as the Songman in the stage production Warhorse, which toured Australia and New Zealand.

A cheerful highlight of the tribute was a rendition of John’s song ‘Bill and the Bear’, about a Maleny man who wrestled a bear at Wirth’s Circus, back in the day. A scratch orchestra led by brass player Mal Webb marched in from the back of the venue to play the extended instrumental.

It was an appropriately sombre, hilarious, cheerful and tearful event. John would have been incredulous that he could draw a full house at a 9am festival gig.

From there, I wandered off to catch Jem Casser-Daley at one of her first Woodford gigs. Jem played piano and was backed by a drummer and bass player. She’s young and her songs are mostly about feeling young and vulnerable, broken relationships or being stood up for a date. She’s confident, natural, has a beautiful voice and showed her musical pedigree by including two covers. First came Neil Young’s ‘Harvest Moon’, maybe inspired by A.J. Lee and maybe not, and then delving into her Dad’s record collection to come up with Carole King’s ‘It’s Too Late’, Baby. Jem Casser-Daley, star of the future.

I found my way back to the 9am venue in time for Eric Bogle’s sound check in which the pithy Scotsman sang ‘For nearly 60 years I’ve been a jockey’. Later, he sang the real song with great heart, as he always does. As a songwriter who is always asked to sing the same one or two songs at gigs, I felt for Eric once again working through ‘No Man’s Land’ (also known as ‘The Green Fields of France’), which was a huge hit for the Fureys and set Eric off on the life of a touring musician. At 77, he’s still in good voice, quipping away between songs and bantering with fellow musicians, Emma Luker (fiddle) and Pete Titchener (guitar and vocals). I feel tired just writing this, but Eric went from a tour of New Zealand in October to a 13-concert tour here in November and a few gigs in December before the tour bus rolled into Woodford. As the quote goes on his tour posters: ‘A mixture of loquacious Scottish humour and exceptionally heartfelt folk songs’. (The Irish Times).

Songwriters tend to become identified with a certain type of song – in Bogle’s case songs about World War I. He told his Woodford audience that he had published 230 songs, of which only 12 are about WWI. He also revealed he had registered ‘No Man’s Land’ under both titles!

Eric is one of three songwriters who wrote a tribute for John Thompson, ‘Catching the Wave’, which is on his latest album, Source of Light.

Fred Smith, better known for songs about the conflict in Afghanistan, penned the as-yet unreleased ‘Sweet Ever After’, watching John’s funeral on Zoom from his room in Kabul. Brisbane folk singer Ian Dearden, a long-time friend and associate, wrote ‘Song for John’ which can be found on Bandcamp.

I like to remember John Thompson as he was – a warm fellow with a brilliant mind, feverish sense of humour, a grand voice, clever writer, sometimes impatient but always with good intentions.

It’s so hard to refer to him in the past tense.

Cat up a tree time of year

cat-up-a-tree-journalism — Photo from www.pixabay.com No, it’s not a Jarrah, but there’s a cat in there!

Here’s a heart-warming story, filed this morning by our intrepid reporter, Abigail Featherweight, on location at Jumpinup Downs, WA.

(Video shows a fire truck pulled up next to a very tall tree where a shirtless fireman in the basket of a cherry picker is rescuing a cat, which, having not only got stuck at the top of the tree, gave birth there to seven kittens).

Morning show host Gavin Brighteeth: Hi Abbey – tell us what’s going on.

Abigail, breathlessly brushing back tendrils of thin blonde hair from an angular face, nodding, as they teach television reporters to do.

“Hi Gavin, good of you to give this story a spin. As you may have heard in the voice-over, a missing neighbourhood cat, Charlize, was found this morning perched in the branches of this 25m Jarrah tree. (Telephoto closeup of Charlize nestled in a pocket of branches where she’s nurturing the seven kittens she gave birth to this morning).

Abigail: It was fireman Vince Colloseum to the rescue, after first taking off his shirt, as it is a steamy 42 degrees this morning at Jumpinup Downs, where this magnificent old tree stands alone at an intersection. Environmental activists who campaigned to save the tree amid urban development dubbed it “Last Jarrah Standing”.

“I see Vince is coming down with yet another two kittens, his muscular torso glistening with sweat.

“Vince is not only a fireman, he is a dedicated body builder and was Mr September in last year’s Firies Calendar. (close up of Vince’s glistening torso).

Abigail, thrusting her mike in Vince’s face: Vince, this is awesome – how many kittens have you rescued now?

Vince: Six, Abbey, so there is one more and Mum, which will be the last load.

Abigail: I see you have been scratched numerous times, Vince?

Vince: “Just a flesh wound or two, hahaha. You have to expect that with cat up a tree rescues. I’ve saved dozens over the years but this is the first one that gave birth way up there.”

Producer in Abigail’s earbud: “Can you find the cat’s owner and interview her now before we go to the next story?”

Vince climbs back into the cherry picker basket and is lofted high into the canopy. The small crowd of locals cheer.

Gavin: Leaving Abigail Featherweight at Jumpinup Downs and crossing to a breaking story where six rusting drums thought to contain pesticide have washed up on Buggerup Beach.

If you haven’t encountered a fluffy news story like that over Christmas, trust me, you will. There are 23 more days of this sort of bumf before school goes back and industry and commerce resumes.

Most news organisations assign reporters to assemble what is known in news parlance as the Yearender. Typically, it will remind us of all the awful things that happened since January 1, 2022, things most of us would rather forget.

If you want to quick snapshot of what the media concentrated on, online media and marketing specialist Mumbrella ran a feature from media-monitoring group Streem.

As Streem’s communications director Jack McClintock said, despite hopes that we had put the pandemic behind us, “Wall-to-wall COVID coverage in the opening months of 2022 ensured it would be the top story of the year.”

“As the year unfolded, numerous other major news events took place, including the War in Ukraine, the 2022 Federal Election and the death of The Queen. Add to these significant events strong undercurrents of cost of living pressures, including inflation and energy prices, and 2022 was as big a news year as they come.”

Covid dominated media discussions for seven months this year, interrupted only by big stories including Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, the March Federal election, the death of Queen Elizabeth and massive flooding in parts of eastern Australia.

Queen Elizabeth II’s death on September 9 was the most prominent story on one single day, Streem observed. Other big single-story days included the COVID wave in early January, Ukraine’s initial invasion and Shane Warne’s death on March 4.

As for the media ‘Person’ of the year, honours were shared (in Australia) between Vladimir Putin, Scott Morrison, and Anthony Albanese. All had very high peaks in prominence, and a strong level of sustained media attention. The exception was in January, when tennis player and prominent anti-vaxxer Novak Djokovic claimed headlines by his arrival (and subsequent expulsion) for the 2022 Australian Open.

https://mumbrella.com.au/streem-insights-reveal-the-biggest-news-stories-of-2022-769537

All is forgiven, apparently, as Novak is scheduled to play in Adelaide and Melbourne next month. Also in the forgiven category was Premier Daniel Andrews, an emphatic winner of the Victorian election in November.

As we know the mainstream media (MSM) allots the biggest headlines and pictures and the longest radio or TV coverage to the ‘if it bleeds it leads’ category of news story. These days television is aided and abetted by amateur reporters who file breaking news videos for broadcast to live television. The most recent example was the fuel tanker explosion near the South African town of Boksburg which killed at least 15 people. The actual explosion was caught on a smart phone and broadcast by international media. Reports like this have led to many news broadcast warnings that ‘some people may find this footage distressing’. You reckon?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-64086051

Most television channels now have a section devoted to ‘good news stories’, although I don’t always agree with their definition.

For example, in November there was a frantic search going on to find a man who bought a winning Powerball (lottery) ticket in Forster (NSW). This angle was spun until the man was contacted and notified days later he had won $50 million. And much was made of the Australian soccer team making its way to the World Cup quarter finals. No! We lost!

My definition of a good news story was when Shayla Phillips (4) and her dog went missing in dense Tasmanian bushland. We were in Tassie at the time (March) and could appreciate the concern as night temperatures plummeted. Shayla was found safe, dehydrated but well after two nights alone in the bush.

Earlier this month, grave fears we held for four teenagers on paddleboards who drifted into rough seas off the Mornington Peninsula. They were found safe the following day, but stranded on a remote island .

Good news from FOMM’s perspective included the Federal Government’s commitment to a 43% reduction in CO2 emissions and the first group of refugees leaving Nauru, bound for New Zealand.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese kept an election promise to quickly resolve the long-running saga of the Tamil refugees. The Nadesalingam family were released from years of detention, granted permanent visas and allowed to return to Biloela, where they had formed a community bond.

I’ll get off my soap box now and let you start the countdown to January 1, 2023. I imagine almost all of you (at a party) will form a circle and sing Robert Burns’ ‘Auld Lang Syne’, whether you know the words or not.

Maybe this can be a year when we who are most fortunate reflect on those who are not. As Burns said:

“Some hae meat and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it, But we hae meat and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit.”

Resolution: we all want to save the world

resolution-save-world — Image: Southern Downs Regional Council water-wise pamphlet

Blame it not on the Bossa Nova but on the ancient Babylonians, who, 4,000 years ago, invented the dubious practice of making New Year resolutions.

The Babylonians were the first to hold New Year celebrations, although held in March (when crops were sown).

The Babylonians pledged to pay their debts and return any borrowed objects (thinks: whoever borrowed Murakami’s ‘IQ84’ and Cohen’s ‘Beautiful Losers’, give them back!).

An article in <history.com> cites these rituals as the forerunner of our New Year resolutions.

“If the Babylonians kept to their word, their (pagan) gods would bestow favour on them for the coming year. If not, they would fall out of the good books -a place no one wanted to be.”

Off and on for at least 60 years I have been making promises to no-one in particular that I would turn over a new leaf (an idiom derived from the days when a page in a book was known as a leaf), thus, to start afresh on a blank page.

Adolescent resolutions included promising to keep my room tidy and stop acting on naughty thoughts (less I go blind).

As decades passed, these resolutions turned to more weighty matters: to drink less, give up smoking, spend more time with the kids – that sort of thing.

The stalwart English clergyman John Wesley took the Babylonian resolution to another level, inventing the Covenant Renewal Service, commonly held on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day. Time has eroded the ritual’s religious overtones and these days making New Year resolutions is a secular activity that ranks alongside taking photos of your restaurant meal and posting it on Instagram.

If you have serious reasons for making an ethical promise to yourself to stop doing this or that or indeed to actively do something for the good of humanity, then go for it.

My three global resolutions for 2020, the first year of a new decade (although there are those who insist the first year of the new decade is 2021), are for the most part geared to survival (of the planet),

On Monday I was in the Warwick Council offices (handing in the paperwork for my seniors’ rates discount). There was a pamphlet on the desk explaining how to limit water use to 80 litres of water per day.

The limit was dropped from 100 litres per person a few weeks ago, given the parlous state of the region’s dams and lack of substantial rainfall.

Our existing 1,500 litre rainwater tank has but one ring left after (a) someone left the hose on or (b) someone sneaked in and stole it – an ever-increasing risk in this region. Next week we are having a 5,000 litre tank delivered. In so doing, we will have the entire cost of the tank deducted from our next rates bill. We have to pay for a handyman to build a base and also pay the plumber, but those are small prices to pay for water security. Mind you, it will take several decent falls of rain to make an impression on a combined 6,500 litre capacity.

Southern Downs Regional Council helpfully produced a pamphlet (above) which explains at a glance how you can get through 80 litres of water in a day.

The hard habit to break is flushing the toilet after every use (12 litres per flush). Most people in the region have a Mellow Yellow policy in place, which is what you think it is.

Living in an area which has seen no decent rainfall in two years quickly makes one mindful of how we routinely waste water. Now we aim to save and recycle every drop. Water left in a pot after steaming vegies, for example, once cooled is poured under a tree.

If you had wondered, yes, you could be fined for using more than your quota. The water meter reader will find you out. Not only will you get charged more pro rata for water use, if there is a leak in the system on your property, you are responsible for repairing (and paying) for it.

The second resolution is to ensure I generate as little waste as possible. As you’d know, moving house employs a lot of cardboard, paper, bubble wrap and rolls of packing tape which, at the other end, refuse to give up their grim hold.

Three trips to local transfer stations (dumps) later, I can see the urgency in re-thinking my attitude to household waste and packaging. When packing up, I picked up a few Styrofoam boxes (with lids) from the local supermarket. They made for sensible packing of fragile electronic components and the like.

But once you no longer have a use for Styrofoam or bubble wrap, what then? The local transfer station 15kms outside Warwick has a special container for polystyrene. As we found when getting lost looking for green waste, it also has a pit for asbestos and dead animals. (Ed: that’s what we call a non-sequitur)

We did donate a stack of flattened out storage boxes and a box full of plastic bubble wrap to a friend who is moving to our new town in January. A generous gesture, or did we just handball our waste problem to someone else?

Resolution number three is to reduce our personal carbon footprint – a hard thing to do when you live an hour’s drive from the nearest large city. When we were doing the green nomad thing driving around Australia, we worked out our carbon emissions and converted them into dollars. Then we donated an equivalent amount to a Landcare/tree planting organisation.

So while we are still driving a petrol-fuelled vehicle, we‘ll continue to do that. Once the height of summer has passed and hopefully some rain has fallen, we’ll plant as many trees and shrubs as this small suburban block can take. There’s a plan for a pergola on the western side, upon which we will grow grapes and other edible vines. This will hopefully mitigate our enslavement to the fossil-fuelled vehicle.

Of these three big resolutions for 2020, managing personal waste is the biggest challenge. We already started a compost bin. You can freeze and bury meat scraps, allowing decomposition and worms to work their natural miracles (Ed: if you have a dog, do not do this).

Avoiding packaging when you go shopping for groceries is harder. First thing: take your kete* with you. Fill it with unwashed fruit and vegetables straight from the bins. Check them out and put them back in the kete. Avoid prepacked fruit and vegetables, especially sealed packets of salad greens. Use paper bags if you have to, but be sure to compost them when they get wet and soggy.

On the outskirts of this town, young people are making a go of a small organic produce farm – hard to do in a drought. The ‘office’ is a small air conditioned shed with a couple of fridges, a bench with a set of scales and a pad on which to work out the total of your purchases. You then put the cash in an honesty box or arrange an EFTPOS transfer with the owner. It goes without saying you have to bring your own bag or box.

One can only hope that people do the right thing and that this brave little enterprise survives these arid times.

Happy New Year and please note, apart from the automatic distribution of this blog, I am having a break from social media through January. Thanks to those who subscribed to the cause.

*Kete is a woven flax basket traditionally used by the New Zealand Maori