thegoodwills.com - Page 24 of 56 - Witty, thought-provoking songs + reflective essays

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

A collection of must-reads for 2020

must-read-2020 — Image: Forest fires in the Amazon: www.pixabay.com https://www.facebook.com/pages/PixFertig/550895548346133 Bushfires in Australia ripped through 1.6 million hectares between August and December, 60% more than the Amazon forest fires which burned out 900,000ha earlier this year.

In seeing out 2019, I thought it might be useful to direct you to some insightful essays and analysis on the burning issues of the year.

Make no mistake, when the clock counts down the seconds to midnight on December 31, the honeymoon will be short. Australia is entering 2020 with a serious list of challenges. Not necessarily in order of importance, they include drought, fire, water security, the climate crisis, a stagnant domestic economy, the spiralling cost of housing and a widening gulf between the seriously wealthy and the working poor. Welfare recipients, the mentally ill and homeless people need taxpayer-funded help more than anyone.

To date, our peerless leaders of both State and Federal governments appear to have few answers to these questions. In their stead, we rely on informed and educated commentators.

An incisive piece by Everald Compton, an 89-year-old essayist posed the question ‘Will a candidate from the left ever win an election again?”

A fair question, given the pasting politicians of the Left have received at the ballot box in Australia, the UK, America, South America and key European countries.

In reviewing the global swing to the right and why so-called social justice parties have fallen so far out of favour, Compton concludes the Left had blurred complex messages. Politicians of the Right, meanwhile, worked hard to become popular with voters.

For example, in the most recent UK election, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn campaigned on a manifesto of radical policies, such as buying back the British Rail System and freeing up traffic congestion by allowing free rail travel.

His opponent Boris Johnson simply said (over and over): “Let’s get Brexit done; let’s get rid of the pain of recent years.”

As Everald wrote, that is what most people had on their minds when they filled out their ballot papers.

Likewise with Labor’s crushing electoral defeat in May 2019, Labor Leader Bill Shorten came up with 145 policies, none of which he managed to sell to voters. His opponent Scott Morrison had one mantra: “Don’t trust Shorten, he will take all your money in high taxes.” It worked!

In the US election campaign of 2016, Donald Trump had one speech only: “I am going to drain the swamp in Washington.”

Hilary Clinton, according to Compton, directed all her speeches “to please the great and the mighty”.

“In the end, most voters did not trust her. They believed that she was not one of them.

“Voters respond to ideas and visions, not policies. They vote for Leaders not Parties.

“It is a lesson that those on the Left have not learned. They simply don’t talk the language of the average voter.”

In an article about Europe’s cult of personality, Politico’s Matthew Karnitschnig wrote that the UK election demonstrated how ‘personality rules’. Polls consistently showed Johnson to be better liked than Jeremy Corbyn. (Polls showed much the same trend in Australia, with Morrison edging out Shorten as preferred leader for months on end).

“In today’s political landscape, where ideology and principle have been supplanted by pragmatism and raw opportunism, parties often serve as little more than wrapping for the larger-than-life personalities who lead them,” Karnitschnig wrote.

The list of cheeky mavericks includes “BoJo” (Johnson), “Basti” (Austrian conservative leader Sebastian Kurz) and “Manu” (French president Emmanuel Macron).

The big question is where Europe’s personality-driven politics will lead.

“They may be like fireworks that burn very bright and then burn out,” said Robin Niblett, the director of Chatham House, the London-based think tank.

Politics aside (for now), the news story of the year was Westpac’s egregious mishandling of some 23 million transactions that breached money laundering rules. So far, the scandal has claimed the scalps of the chief executive and chairman and no doubt internal reviews will result in staff being sacked or demoted. Westpac’s share price has slumped from just under $30 at the end of September to a pre-Christmas low of $24.21 That’s a 20% loss in share value, which cynics might suggest investors will find more alarming than yet another scandal for a bank which, like its three rivals, has seen more than a few over the decades.

The Australian Financial Review had the bright idea of contacting former Westpac boss Bob Joss (now dean of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business) for comment.

Joss appeared disappointed that the strong risk management culture he injected into the Sydney-based bank had failed.

“What is needed right now is a thorough investigation and analysis of the facts so the breakdown in risk management can be understood and fixed, and accountability for failure can be assigned.”

Analysis of Australia’s waning economy (like a fully laden iron ore train going uphill), is best left to experts. Here, the AFR looks at Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s determination to hold on to the first Budget surplus in more than a decade. In so doing, he is ignoring the call from the Reserve Bank to open the coffers and stimulate the economy. The Christmas shopping figures will come out soon and then we will know if the much-discussed retail recession will spread to other sectors of the economy.

Direct action by farmers who organised a rally to Canberra to protest water security and drought management is one example that PM Morrison’s constituents may be having second thoughts. The same applies to veteran firefighters who sent a delegation to the nation’s capital seeking a meeting with the PM. He didn’t want to face them either.

The government’s main response to rising public angst about bushfires, drought, water management and the climate crisis is to champion tougher penalties against those who choose the right to protest. This mean-spirited, ‘blame the victim’ response is, alas, typical of Right-wing governments the world over.

The Guardian let writer Richard Flanagan loose in an opinion piece titled “Scott Morrison and the climate change lie – does he think we are that stupid?”

Flanagan railed against the view of some commentators that Morrison is a political genius – the winner of the unwinnable election.

“But history may judge him differently: a Brezhnevian figure; the last of the dinosaurs, presiding over an era of stagnation at the head of a dying political class imprisoned within and believing its own vast raft of lies as the world lived a fundamentally different reality of economic decay, environmental pillage and social breakdown.”

Flanagan ended his well-argued tirade with an observation that Morrison is held in thrall and thus influenced by his Pentecostal religion.

When the Rapture comes, Flanagan wrote, the Chosen are saved and the unbelievers left to “a world of fires, famine and floods in which we all are to suffer and the majority of us to die wretchedly”.

“Could it be that the Prime Minister in his heart is – unlike the overwhelming majority of Australians – not concerned with the prospect of a coming catastrophe when his own salvation is assured?”

Yep, someone had to say it.

I will leave you with scientific insights (as suggested by Mr Shiraz), into what happens to native forests, particularly wet sclerophyll forests, once they have ‘recovered’ from the ‘unprecedented’ bush fires that burned across Australia between August and December 2019.

If that is all too depressing, here is a fluffy piece of nostalgia about a man and his typewriter (recommended by Franky’s Dad).

The team here at FOMM (two people and a dog) wish you all a safe, healthy and smoke-free 2020. We will need more than thoughts and prayers.

A Festive Feast of Christmas Movies

Has it ever occurred to you how few Australian Christmas movies there are and why our lives are so permeated by American culture (such as it is)? This week’s theme came to mind whilst seated in a front row pew at St Mark’s Anglican church in Warwick. We were participating in a Christmas service with our new choir, the East Street Singers.

It’s a magnificent 151-year-old sandstone kirk with a landmark tower, stained glass windows and distinctive bells which ring out over the town. The church has been much renovated and added to over the years and now is raising funds for sandstone restoration work costing $1 million. (see photo below)

The choir performed at various points during the evening church service, so there was time to sit and reflect. In my case, this amounted to thinking back many years to my childhood, raised in the Methodist faith by devout parents. Should I say this was my first time in a church since a funeral several years ago? I listened quite avidly to the ‘message’ by St Mark’s new Rector, the Rev Lizzie Gaitskell. I told her afterwards that her message was far removed from the fire and brimstone sermons of my childhood.

Her self-penned message compared the humble origins of the Christmas story with the commercial, chocolate-box version of the festive season. In saying so she confessed that she and her children has been indulging in a slightly saccharine diet of Christmas movies, courtesy of Netflix. The formulaic movies feature “picture-perfect, drought-free, carefree towns and villages in a festively snow-clad America, or a delightfully chocolate-box looking kingdom in Europe.”

“Is Christmas really to be found in this chocolate box escape hatch of our own contriving?” she asked.

There’s a lot we don’t know about the first Christmas, she added – was there even a donkey and a stable as such? Rev Gaitskill names Mary’s husband, Joseph, as the under-rated character in the Christmas story.

“In all likelihood Mary was little more than a teenager; carrying a child that was not her husband Joseph’s – though his readiness to marry her, guaranteed both hers and the baby’s safety.

“A young, first time Mother, giving birth outside her home town after a long journey. It’s as far from chocolate box as you can get.”

I ought not to confess to a wandering mind while listening to Lizzie deliver a message she had clearly put much time and thought into. But I was latching on the kernel of an idea for today’s FOMM, which I realised at that moment would be my 2019 Christmas message.

So the topic this week is Christmas movies, of which there are so many that websites dedicated to cinema can easily rattle off a ‘top 50’ or ‘top 100’ movies.

Two observations to be made here: the majority of movies have been generated by Hollywood, typically covering all of the traditional bases − Santa, snow, snowmen, reindeer, sleighs, plum pudding, Christmas bells, mistletoe, carols, Christmas trees and gift-giving.

The second point is that so few Christmas movies can stand repeated viewings, and even then, only once a year.

First of all there are feel-good movies which have no real bearing on Christmas other than that they are set at that time of year (Home Alone*, Love Actually*) or Christmas-setting action dramas (Diehard, Beverly Hills Cop*).

Some are (depending on your sense of humour and ideas about taste and relevance), quite appalling. I cite Bad Santa I and II, Gremlins and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation *. This third movie in a series about the hapless Griswold family is as tacky as the other two, raising the point made by a critic “One of the wonder s of Hollywood is how Chevy Chase still manages to get work.”

How crass is crass? Try this dialogue (from the 55 top Christmas movies review by Rotten Tomatoes).

Todd Chester: Hey Griswold! Where do you think you’re gonna put a tree that big?

Clark W. Griswold Jr. Bend over and I’ll show you!

Some of the movies mentioned can be seen on free-to-air TV in the coming week (those with an asterisk and also, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Fred Klaus, Christmas with the Kranks and the (execrable) Office Christmas Party.

So what rings my Christmas bell, you may ask?

As you may know from my song ‘Burning Father’s Letters’, I am something of a Dickens fan. So most of the 30+ versions of A Christmas Carol sum up the Christmas message for me.

The classic story of Scrooge, a bitter miser who is beset by ghosts of Christmas past and persuaded to mend his ways, has been re-told dozens of times in wildly different ways.

I have seen maybe 6 versions, but movie websites rottentomatoes.com and cinemablend.com will tell you more than you ever needed to know about the others.

Starting with the silent version in 1901, A Christmas Carol keeps getting retold because it is a classic case of humanity prevailing over capitalism.

As it happens, the FX made-for-TV mini-series, starring Australia’s Guy Pierce as Ebenezer Scrooge, was released just yesterday.

It has already gleaned some scathing reviews, primarily for turning Scrooge into a scheming psychopath rather than a habitual curmudgeon. I will probably watch it anyway, as it is directed by Peaky Blinders director Steve Knight (who has a reputation for gothic ultra-violence).

The critics unanimously picked the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol starring Alistair Sim as a stand-out. I did like the 2009 CGI-laden version starring Jim Carrey. While it did stray from the Dickens story, I liked Bill Murray’s Scrooged. Some years back I recall seeing George C Scott and Edward Woodward in a British version which stuck authentically to the Dickens story.

Meanwhile in Australia, with our upside down version of Christmas, there have been only a half-dozen Christmas films worth mention.

They include the 1947 Chips Rafferty classic, Bush Christmas, remade in 1983 with Nicole Kidman, making her screen debut at 16. Now that we have a smart TV with access to a vast database of movies, I might track down this Jane Campion-directed movie (Ed: he always had a thing about Nicole, who I call ‘the stick insect’).

The Guardian’s Travis Johnston had a stab at making sense of Australia’s unwillingness to come to the Christmas movie party. He put it down to ‘simple visual iconography’.

“We celebrate Christmas in Australia, for sure, but we’re a desert island that experiences a seemingly endless summer, and the traditional trappings of the northern hemisphere holiday look a bit ludicrous against the bright, cloudless skies and blistering heat of an Australian December.”

I shall round out this FOMM with a few links to my Christmases-past. Thank you for supporting this weekly essay, now in its sixth year. I wrote this one on a fast-dying Toshiba laptop on a keyboard with two missing keys and the letters worn off five or six of the characters through relentless typing.

As my French travelling companion Marcel said in his tiny Paris apartment, circa 1978: “Merde – you write like a machine!”

Merry Christmas. Take care out there.

2018 https://bobwords.com.au/friday-on-my-mind-ring-christmas-bells-and-other-carols/

2017 https://bobwords.com.au/fomm-alt-christmas-playlist/

2016 https://bobwords.com.au/obamas-last-christmas-card/

Heavy lifting and hernias

heavy-lifting-hernias — Bob avoids heavy lifting by hiding out in the garage

On Monday afternoon, two wiry young men backed a furniture van into our driveway and began unloading our goods and chattels. My nephew’s wise words rang in my ears – “Hopefully the movers are doing all the heavy lifting, Uncle – LOL.”

One of these blokes was wearing a knee brace. I made a mental note to ask him about it, as furniture removalists are prone to injury, hernias in particular.It turned out he had injured his knee playing soccer with his kids (sound familiar?) As you may have read (see link at the end) I had serious knee injuries in the late 1960s, so now go to some trouble to avoid doing anything which might inflame either of my knees.

Apart from our furniture, we had approximately 110 packing boxes of various sizes and weights. I did not lift any of these boxes, which came off the truck on a trolley and down a ramp four or five at a time.

Those two lads deserve a medal. Their day started early, loading the truck from a storage unit in our former town. Then they drove four hours via back roads (the Cunningham Highway was closed). It was also very hot and humid but they persevered with the work until finished. We directed traffic – put this here, take that there, but mainly instructed them to stack boxes in the garage.

As a bonus, these lads put our two beds together, having no clue as to how much domestic angst was avoided in the process. (They seemed surprised, but pleased that we presented them with a slab of beer. They promised not to drink it on the way home.)

Once they left, it became apparent how difficult it would be for two people over 70 to stick to a self-imposed ban on lifting anything heavier than 20kg.

When I had an inguinal hernia repaired in 2004, the surgeon at Nambour Hospital assured me it was so common he had done 600 repairs that year alone.

As I recall, he said the injury was most common in furniture removalists and farmers (and sedentary office workers). An inguinal hernia occurs when part of the lower intestine protrudes though the inguinal canal. The injury commonly occurs through straining (e.g. improper lifting, constipation or persistent coughing). Wind instrument players (trumpet, saxophone) are also prone to inguinal hernias.

Check out Weird Al’s disco tribute to hernias.

In my case, the hernia dated from when I bought an old ex-government desk (a heavy one with a metal frame).

“Bend your knees and don’t strain,” I instructed my son, “or you’ll give yourself a hernia.” At the first ‘one, two, go’ I felt something pop in my groin area. Next day I had a noticeable lump. Our family GP at the time took hold of the lump and told me to cough – twice.

“Yep, it’s a hernia. You’ll need to get it repaired eventually.”

He did not put any time frame on this, other than to add that if I had excruciating pain, get to hospital ASAP because sometimes hernias become strangulated.

So in May 2005 I took two weeks’ sick leave to recover from the operation. On returning to work, I found that sitting down for eight hours was very uncomfortable. I bought one of those doughnut cushions commonly found in nursing homes.

Last year, Australian surgeons repaired 100,000 hernias and many more went undetected or ignored. The lifetime risk for males is about 1 in 5 (1-50 for females). In 90% of cases, surgeons use a fine nylon mesh patch to reinforce the muscle wall of the lower abdomen, as it greatly reduces the risk of recurrence.

Updating my 14 year old story, I discovered a new medical term – ‘mesh migration’. This is when (in 5% of cases), the mesh insert moves to another part of the lower abdomen. While relatively rare, the problem does exist and can occur years after the operation. Most of the literature is contained in medical journals, but I did find one or two in blogs generated my personal injury lawyers.

Occasional groin twinges and aching knees aside, at 71 I am still relatively fit and agile. The test, as Billy Connolly once quipped, is how long it takes you to get out of a bean bag.

When moving boxes to the relevant room, we employed a much-used luggage trolley – a big one with rubber wheels. When something felt like a two person lift, I would summon She Who Had a Laminectomy Years Ago and we carefully manoeuvred the object onto said trolley.

There are good reasons to avoid heavy lifting or poorly executed lifting.

In 2013, musculoskeletal injuries comprise 90% of claims made to Worksafe Australia (our workers’ compensation organisation).

As Axis Rehab notes, lower back injuries make up the large majority of work-related injuries. They can range from less serious muscle strains, or joint sprains, to more serious injuries (disc prolapses).

“These injuries can occur from a traumatic event, but can just as often result from something as innocuous as rotating to reach for something, bending to tie a shoe lace, or picking up something unexpectedly heavy or awkward.” (So, Bob, forget about carrying me over the threshold-Ed.)

Most injuries involve large and complex joints – shoulders, hips, knees, ankles and wrists. The modern answer to chronic knee and hip paint is to replace the joint with an artificial one. If you live long enough, you may need a second one! A large study by The Lancet, which used thousands of cases in Australia, concluded that the average life span of a hip or knee replacement is 15 years.

An article in New Daily stated that hip and knee procedures are the most common type of joint replacement surgeries in Australia. More than 850,000 hip and knee replacements have been recorded in the past 20 years,

The Australian Orthopaedic Association’s National Joint Replacement Registry last year reported 63,577 knee procedures and 47,621 hip procedures,

The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury is the one all professional sports people fear more than most and not just because of the intense pain. It can take six to nine months to recover full mobility after an ACL reconstruction, as the graft needs time to heal. Australia now leads the world in the number of ACL joint reconstructions.

A Medical Journal of Australia study of ACL injuries found that the incidence is rapidly increasing among young people. During the study period, (2000-2015) 197,557 primary ACL reconstructions were performed. The annual incidence increased by 43 during the study period and by 74% among those under 25 years of age. Direct hospital costs of ACL reconstruction surgery were estimated to be $142 million.

The big question is whether a young person who has had an ACL reconstruction (or two) will need a knee replacement in the future. The cost disparities are obvious. In 2013, some 400,000 inpatient primary hip and knee procedures cost Medicare more than $7 billion for hospitalisations alone. Medicare spent an average of $16,500 to $33,000 per patient for the surgery, hospitalisation, and recovery from hip and knee replacements.

Apart from being costly to the nation (and private health funds), knee replacements are quite radical operations. I know a few people for whom they did not go smoothly. Given my chequered history of knee surgery, I have decided that unless I am literally unable to walk, I will take my old knees to the grave. You read it here first.

https://bobwords.com.au/septuagenarian-motorbike-dreams/

Thanks to those who have joined the annual subscriber drive to keep FOMM on the road. If it slipped your memory, here is the link.

https://bobwords.com.au/friday-on-my-mind-subscriber-drive-2019/

Friday on My Mind subscriber drive 2019

Dear WordPress Followers

How quickly a year passes. It is time for my annual subscriber drive, where you get to choose whether to make a small payment to cover ongoing expenses of maintaining the Bobwords website. FOMM is a free weekly essay offered in the spirit of Citizen Journalism. There are no ads on the website and I intend to keep it that way.

If you are a fan of FOMM, which began in May 2014, and would like to see it continue, you can make a voluntary subscriber payment of $10, $15 or $20. The minimum amount equates to 19 cents a week.

If you want to know where the money goes, there is an annual payment of around $285 which covers me for public liability. Then there are payments of about $500 a year to maintain the website and enlist technical support when needed.

Keeping it Simple

If you want to make a payment, email me at bobwords<at>ozemail.com.au and I will send you my bank details. Just label your payment ‘FOMM subscription’. Alternatively, if you prefer PayPal can make a payment to goodwills<at>ozemail.com.au

Thanks in anticipation

Bob Wilson

Black Friday and a spot of retail therapy

Black-Friday-retail — “Get in there, damn it’ – Image by Sean Leahy

We who have always associated ‘Black Friday’ with Friday the 13^th (unlucky for some), were no doubt confused by the retail rallying call of the past week.

According to McCrindle Research, the US concept of Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), is gaining traction in Australia. Back in 2017, a McCrindle survey showed that 1 in 4 (24%) of Australians had never heard of Black Friday. Two years on, only 6% of Australians have never heard of Black Friday. This year’s research showed that almost 45% of respondents were going to take advantage of sales and discounts.

In the US, Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), is a signal for 100 million Americans to walk off their turkey dinners and go shopping. Americans typically spend more than US$50 billion on this one day.

She Who Researches Before Buying was following me around one of Brisbane’s biggest retail barns on Sunday. The shopping list was (1) a smart TV (2) a portable air conditioner (3) a microwave (4) a vacuum cleaner and (5) an entertainment unit. SWRBB had decided that only item 2 was needed immediately. Things changed once we entered the blissfully chilled domain of a category killer retailer (when I say chilled I refer to the room temperature, not the ambient noise level).

We’d done a bit of research into items 1 and 2, so were quickly persuaded by the price of the short-listed TVs (both $250 below the RRP). Those of you who shop early and often will know that RRP stands for recommended retail price. Since the majority of such items began to emerge from factories in China, very few retailers insist upon RRP. I’m not privy to the wholesale figures, but it’s a fair bet that 30% off something made in China still allows the retailer to make a profit.

This might be a good time to confess that my One And Only (O&O) and I, to borrow a term of endearment from blogger Kathryn Johnston, are the most sales-resistant people outside of hard-core hippies and those with no cash or credit. When we buy big-ticket retail items, the drill is that I produce my credit card and between us we pay the balance off at the end of the month. Did I mention we had earlier bought two ceiling fans from a lighting sales room which cried out ‘while you are here’ ?

Back at the big barn front counter, after resisting attempts to have us upgrade to a five-year warranty, I noticed a sign warning buyers that TVs 55 inches or bigger may not fit into a normal vehicle. Time to tell us now.

After heading to despatch behind the enormous tilt-slab warehouse, we encountered a fit-looking guy who checked out the vehicle. He suggested we move this here and that there and let the back seats down. Between us we got the 55 inch TV into the vehicle, leaning it on the portable air conditioner (itself a substantial package) the two fans, an esky, two folding chairs, a bag of dog crunchies and a yoga mat. Wisely, we left the microwave, entertainment unit and vacuum cleaner for another day, vowing to shop locally.

In relating this rare venture into retail sales, I am more aware than ever that while the car park was full and people were milling about purposefully, the latest studies on consumer confidence suggest the retail sector is in recession. Even the most bullish retailers concede they are unlikely to set new spending records this month. I genuinely wish it were different, as a few people I know work in retail (and a few more that work part-time).

The Westpac-Melbourne Institute Consumer Sentiment Index fell by more than 5% in October to 92.8 points, the lowest reading since July 2015. A reading of 100 sits on the barbed wire fence between optimism and pessimism. Even though the index bounced back (up 45% in November to 97.0), the survey authors say the mood is still downbeat as we enter the Christmas shopping month. Another long-running survey, the ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence index, is at a four-year low of 106.8. The index averaged 114.4 this year, down 3.5% from 118.5 in 2018.

The weekly survey also showed a 1.5% drop in the numbers of respondents who thought they were better off at the same time last year.

Australia has its own economic quirks, but it is interesting to note that similar surveys in the US have been on the slide since August.

As the Australian Financial Review’s Sue Mitchell reminded us, Harvey Norman chief executive Katie Paige warned back in August that the government’s tax cuts were unlikely to stimulate retail spending. A concurrent ATO crackdown on individual and business taxpayers prompted small businesses and consumers to keep their heads down (meaning to avoid being involved in something/anything).

Retail sales have been in a trough all year, despite the Reserve Bank’s optimistic forecast of a “gentle turning point” for the economy.

When working as a business writer in the late 1980s and 1990s, I researched retail sales trends, because they often foreshadowed upturns (or downturns) in the economy. The AFR’s Sue Mitchell was specialising in this sector in that era and she’s still there!

So when she tells you retail sales figures have recorded the biggest fall since the 1990-91 recession, you might want to pay attention. Year on year sales growth has slowed from 3.7% in September 2018 to 2.5% in September this year, Mitchell reported. Sales volumes fell 0.1% in the quarter and by 0.2% over the past 12 months.

Super Retail Group chief executive Anthony Heraghty told the AFR the sector was volatile.

“Customers are up and down and you’ll see a couple of good weeks and then a week that’s not so impressive,” Heraghty said. (This might be the right place to disclose that the Cheeseparer Superannuation Fund recently bought shares in Super Retail Group, which owns Rebel, Supercheap Auto, BCF and Macpac.)

The irony for Australian retailers is that the seemingly endless cycle of discount days has created an expectation that the RRP is permanently up for negotiation.

Conservative people who rarely lash out on ‘stuff’ will put their must-buy list aside and wait for the Boxing Day sales. Or the Back to School, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, End of Financial Year, Father’s Day, Singles Day, Click Frenzy, Halloween, Black Friday, Cyber Monday or pre-Christmas sales. Hurry, hurry, all stock must go.

I’ll leave the last word to The Chaser’s 2007 spoof,’ ‘Killer Persian Rug Sale’. This 45-second mock ad was one of many such over the top send-ups of Australia’s fast-talking television retail sales arena.

“Must sell by midnight or die”.

Today’s illustration is by cartoonist Sean Leahy, one of Queensland’s best-known artists.

https://www.facebook.com/leahycartoons/

The future for bushfire volunteers

On my late evening dog walks in the rural village of Yangan near Warwick, it has become customary to wave to the volunteer firefighters as they arrive back at base. If they can lift their arms, they wave back.

These volunteers, known in Australia as ‘firies’, are holding containment lines around multiple fires burning in the ranges around Cunningham’s Gap. The Cunningham Highway between Warwick and Brisbane has been closed for two weeks due to poor visibility and debris on the road. The highway opened yesterday, with restricted speeds on several sections.

As a result of fires at Spicer’s Gap, Swanfels, Clumber and elsewhere in the district, we have been ‘smoked in’ on multiple occasions. On Wednesday, a wind change brought smoke down to ground level as district people turned out for the Festival of Small Halls gig at Freestone.

This event, featuring local lads the Fern Brothers, well-travelled duo Hat Fitz and Cara and British songwriter Blair Dunlop, was a much-needed morale boost after two years of drought and two months of bushfire concerns.

You could be forgiven for not knowing there are tens of thousands of Australians who volunteer as firies. When not involved in extinguishing and containing bush fires, they are often out and about cutting firebreaks. Apart from periodic encounters outside bush fire brigade sheds or local pubs, we don’t see these people, who melt back into the community once the danger has passed. It is important that we do not take for granted the vital services they provide to rural communities.

You hear stories – a note left inside a house, surrounded by charred vegetation. “We saved the house…we owe you a bottle of milk.”

Friends who had a rural property in the Grampians returned from travels, unaware that bushfires had swept through the district. Once again, the land was charred but the house saved.

If there is a risk to the heroic status of rural firefighters, headlines announcing that a teenage volunteer in NSW had been charged with multiple counts of arson, were not what the fire services needed. While the volunteer is yet to have his day in court, he has been charged with setting seven fires in the Bega district and then returning to help fight them.

“Our members will be rightly angry that the alleged actions of one individual can tarnish the reputation and hard work of so many,” RFS commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said in a statement to the media.

As explained on The Feed (TV station SBS programme ), bush fires are best managed by a predominantly local, volunteer workforce.

Stuart Ellis, a former Chief Officer of the Country Fire Service in South Australia, said that as fire seasons intensify, the need for firefighters at any one time will vary across Australia.

“It’s difficult to predict when and where the largest bushfires will be; even once fires start, a shift in wind direction can rapidly change things.

“When volunteers are required, they need to be present in significant numbers and often close to the areas where the fires will occur.”

Local firies are more likely to have the knowledge, familiarity and expertise in fuel, weather conditions and topography

The numbers are impressive – 70,000 volunteers keep the NSW Fire Service going – the largest such brigade in the world. The size implies a huge management task for co-ordinating fire brigades, involving around 900 paid staff. A further 7,000 paid firefighters are employed by Fire and Rescue NSW to handle the metropolitan areas, via some 335 fire stations.

In Queensland, 36,000 people have signed up to the Rural Fire Service, with 5,000 currently active. Volunteers (hereafter known in Australian parlance as ‘vollies’), are in the same category as those enlisting with Emergency Services. They never know when they will get the call, but when they do, it’s an open-ended job with no ‘knock-off’ (quitting) time.

Ellis told The Feed that Australia would be unable to manage the largest fire events without the ‘surge capacity’ volunteers represent.

If you have ever met a ‘firie’, they will tell you they are doing it for the community. Signing up to be a bush brigade volunteer is a selfless task, which for the past 30 years has drawn reliable numbers of people.

But despite the large numbers answering the call to fight spring bushfires in NSW, Victoria, South Australia,Tasmania and Queensland, volunteer numbers are dropping.

A Productivity Commission report shows that 17,000 volunteer firefighters have quit over the past five years. Stuart Robb of the NSW Rural Fire Service told The World Today the main issue was that long-serving firefighters were getting older. In NSW, where vollies outnumber career firefighters 10-1, 40% of firies are over 50.

Robb said people in the age group 25-45 were less able to be involved in community firefighting because of work and family responsibilities.an

The trend is also evident in the US, where a study showed that volunteer numbers dropped from 814,850 in 2015 to 682,600 in 2017. The National Volunteer Fire Council said these were the lowest numbers since the survey began in 1983. The decline in volunteer activity is most noticeable in communities of fewer than 2,500 people. Ageing is a noticeable factor, with 53% of volunteers aged over 40 and 32% over 50.

The US government is working to alleviate this issue, with a grant of $40 million to help pay for volunteer recruitment and retention. Congress is working towards making volunteer firefighters eligible for student loan forgiveness and housing assistance.

Meanwhile, the Australian government has been lobbied by a group of 23 former fire and emergency service leaders. They want the government to declare a climate emergency and commit to investing in more water-bombing aircraft and firefighting resources.

Researcher Blythe McLennan of the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University says that bushfire volunteering is at a crossroads.

If we are fighting bushfires into the next decade with the same or declining numbers of volunteers, using the same approaches we use today, then clearly the job will be much harder and the demands on volunteers will become more extreme.

One of the major reasons for a decline in volunteer numbers, particularly after prolonged and serious fires, is that volunteer firies may suffer financial hardship as a result of missing days at work.

The Volunteer Fire Fighters Association (NSW) has asked the NSW Rural Fire Service to investigate the feasibility of providing financial support via a welfare/relief fund to volunteer fire-fighters during protracted bushfire emergencies.

Eukey Qld Fire Brigade volunteer Rob Simcocks says it’s not just about time off and lost income, but also the sheer exhaustion and mental health concerns after such big efforts.

“It’s not just the time on the fireline, but also a lot of recovery time where you just have to rest, getting nothing else done.”

He agrees volunteer numbers are declining but thinks the age estimates are conservative, given that his local brigade has an average age of 60.

This reminds me of the story my late father-in-law used to tell, of his time fighting forest fires in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia.

“I retired when I turned 75 because I was embarrassing the young blokes who told me they couldn’t keep up with me.”

That may be a shaggy dog story, but it typifies the attitude of people who take on a dangerous job to keep their neighbours out of harm’s way.

Older Australians an economic burden

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s much-reported speech, where he referred to my cohort (the over-65s) as ‘an economic time bomb’, should not be seen as random.

The speech to the conservative think tank, the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia (CEDA), was deeply calculated. Frydenberg’s thesis is that older Australians should work longer and take up re-training to help facilitate a return to the work force, thus easing the country’s social security burden.

Frydenberg was immediately attacked by Seniors’ advocates who pointed out (for starters) that 25% of people on the government’s inadequate unemployment payment (NewStart) are aged 55 and over.

It came in a week when the ABC television debuted its much-hyped show, Australia Talks. The latter is based on a huge survey of 54,000 people, who were asked to prioritise their chief concerns.

The list of worries was headed by household debt, the cost of living and drug and alcohol abuse. Ninety percent of respondents answered they were ‘somewhat’ or very much’ concerned about the top three issues, with water (89%) and ageing population (87%) not far behind.

The Treasurer was interviewed the following day by 2GB radio shock jock Steve Price, who didn’t let him off too lightly:

Price: What do you say to our listeners – people like truckies, labourers and builders, all tradies, saying ‘look, we just can’t work past retirement age because physically our bodies are worn out’?

Frydenberg: Well, that is totally understandable and nobody is asking them to do that. What I am saying…

Price: Well, we are pushing up the age of the pension.

Frydenberg: But what I am saying is that when it comes to that age that you referred to (67), that was legislated by the Labor Party back in 2009 and we haven’t said that we would change the retirement age, so we’ve been very clear about that.

Price: But it goes up to 67, right?

Frydenberg: It does. And again, the Labor Party legislated that in 2009.

Price: But you’re going to leave that there?

The Labor Government did introduce measures in 2009 to increase the pension age to 67 through gradual increases during the period July 2017 to July 2023. But the Abbott government’s 2014–15 Budget proposed to increase the pension age by six months every two years from 1 July 2025 until it reached 70.

Despite Prime Minister Scott Morrison shutting down speculation last year that the government was considering lifting the retirement age to 70, it was a Coalition policy and could resurface at any time.

Ian Henschke from National Seniors Australia said it was unfair to stigmatise older Australians.

“We should blame previous treasurers from 1980 who have stood by and watched this happen.

“Let’s deal with the facts, for example, that older Australians want to work more and longer but they are not getting the work they need.”

“When they do retrain, we know they are experiencing discrimination.”

Statistics support the government’s rhetoric that older people are indeed either staying in the workforce longer or making a comeback. The workforce participation for over-65s stands at 14.6%, up from 6% 20 years ago. It’s not hard to find the reason for that: a basket of goods from the supermarket costing $200 in 1999 will set you back $331 today.

There is lots of sage advice around for people nearing retirement age about how much money they will need to fund a comfortable retirement. There is less information around for those in advanced stages of not working anymore and trying to make their money last.

Moreover, factors well out of everyone’s control continue to move the goalposts, forcing retirees to come up with new and inventive game plans. Specifically I’m talking about the unsustainable investment returns available to retirees, who typically are advised to invest in no-risk strategies.

The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) advises that the ideal superannuation target for a single person on retirement is $545,000 (implying that a couple needs $1.09 million).

So how are we all doing then?

While half-watching the cheerfully superficial Australia Talks, I heard a butcher’s assistant confide that she had $45,000 in her super fund. She didn’t look old enough for this to be a worry yet, but let’s face it; you’d have to sell a shitload of sausages to reach that mythical half a million dollars.

Superannuation was supposed to be the panacea for older Australians not wanting to be a burden on the national pension scheme. But ASFA statistics tell a sobering story. While there are 16.1 million Australians with at least one superannuation account, one in three women and one in four men, across all ages, have no superannuation. So 25% of women and 13% of men are retiring with no superannuation, relying partially or substantially on the Age Pension for their retirement income.

Fair enough, the Age Pension is supposed to be a safety net for Australians who find themselves at 65+ and broke. But why doesn’t Josh Frydenberg shut down the loophole that allows a couple to earn about $75,000 per annum and/or have assets well over $2 million, and still be eligible for some benefits.

In case you had wondered, Australia is a long way down the list of countries which pays its retired citizens something close to a living wage. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), analysed data from 35 member countries and a number of other nations. Pensioners in the Netherlands, Turkey and Croatia receive more than 100% of a working wage when they retire (the right-hand end of the graph).

At the other end of the scale, pensioners in the United Kingdom receive just 29% of a working wage (compared with the OECD average of 63%

Pensions paid as a percentage of a working wage

Image: OECD countries ranked by pensions as a percentage of a working wage. Australia is 12^th from the left, paying 43%. Source OECD.

The OECD’s 2017 report Pensions in Australia noted that public spending on pensions is low and will remain low (currently 4% of GDP and projected to be 4% in 2050) as opposed to 9% and 10% for the OECD. From this we can deduce the government’s future reliance on superannuation, including the government’s compulsory scheme and privately-funded superannuation accounts.

The old age income poverty rate in Australia is high, at 26%, compared to 13% across the OECD. This is partly related to the high prevalence of people taking superannuation funds as lump sums rather than annuities at retirement. These people, as any current affairs programme worth its spots will tell you, squander their money on travel, then risk falling into poverty if they outlive their assets. No doubt they will then sign on for our Age Pension (which costs the county $50 billion a year).

What, may I ask, is wrong with someone who has paid taxes for 45 years retiring on a combination of savings (super) and a part-pension from the government? Frankly, I’d have thought that paying $1 million+ in income tax through my working life would have been enough.

Nobody considered me a burden then, did they?

Further reading: https://bobwords.com.au/taking-an-interest-in-recessionary-economics/

Bushfire smoke, dust storms and asthma

Bushfire-smoke-Brtisbane — Image: Bushfire smoke over Brisbane CBD from the Convention Centre, November 11, 2019. David Kapernick © David Kapernick Photography

Images of Brisbane shrouded in an asthma-inducing smoky haze on Monday reminded me of Queensland Ballet’s season launch in 2009. We had driven down for the matinee on a day when a massive dust storm was predicted. By the time we came out, the dust haze was so thick you could barely see the ABC headquarters across the road from the Lyric Theatre.

No doubt those of you who remember that were reliving it on Monday, only this time it was bushfire smoke, drifting in from all sides: NSW, the Sunshine Coast or from Cunningham’s Gap where the highway has been closed since Sunday .

ABC’s 7.30 report invited an air quality specialist on to the programme who judged Brisbane’s air quality on November 11 to be 6 times above the level when air pollution starts to cause problems for people with respiratory problems. On that day, air quality in Queensland’s capital city (population 2.28 million) was worse than China’s biggest city, Beijing (population 21.24 million).

We tend not to get such alarmist warnings on days when plain vanilla air pollution is bad. It is the obvious nature of bushfire smoke (the smell, the poor visibility, the 24/7 media attention), that raises it to public alert level.

The reason health authorities get worried about bushfire smoke in the atmosphere is that the fine particulate matter in the smoke is hazardous to health. Moreover, the longer it takes to clear, the more serious the risk of exposure becomes. Particulate matter known as P10 and P2.5 are harmful to humans and animals: other sources of these fine particulates include power stations, vehicles, aircraft, and dust from unsealed roads, residential wood fire smoke, bushfires and dust storms.

Brisbane’s topography doesn’t help – the city lies in a basin and is prone to temperature inversions, which trap polluted air. Many cities around the world share this fate. Temperature inversions happen when the air is warmer above the pollution that the air on the ground. The smog is trapped, to the detriment of inhabitants in cities including Beijing, Los Angeles, Chengdu, Lima, Milan and Mexico City.

Before we get into air pollution and air quality monitoring, let’s run a short history of asthma, for the benefit of the nine out of 10 lucky Australians who don’t suffer from it.

In 400 BC, Hippocrates came up with the Greek word for asthma (άσθμα), to describe noisy breathing, the characteristic wheezing which so often signals an asthma attack. Hippocrates (himself) was the first physician to link asthma to environmental triggers and specific, hazardous trades like metalwork.

In layman’s terms, asthma is describes the situation in which you can breathe in but have difficulty breathing out. Someone in the throes of a bad asthma attack is over-inflating their lungs, quite possibly making it worse by hyperventilating.

Medically, it is described as a narrowing of the airways, usually averted by the administering of an inhaled bronchodilator medication or a steroid-based preventer.

Patients presenting at emergency departments with severe asthma are often put on a nebuliser, a machine which administers an inhaled bronchodilator through a mask worn over the mouth and nose. As I recall, last time I was on a nebuliser (when suffering anaphylaxis), relief was rapid and restorative.

Excuse me if I sound really old, but I recall taking tablets for asthma, before inhalers became commonly prescribed. In the 1940s and 50s, asthmatics were either given epinephrine injections (adrenaline) or aminophylline tablets. As I recall, the latter made me jittery, wakeful and a bit weird, although childhood friends would tell you I was like that already.

Statistics maintained by Asthma Australia reveal the burden of the disease on individuals, their carers and Australia’s health system. The cost of the disease, measured by its long-term impacts, was $28 billion in 2015 ($11,740 per person).

In 2017-208, there were 38,792 hospitalisations in which asthma was the main diagnosis; 44% were for children aged 14 or younger,

People with asthma are more likely to report a poor quality of life, but medical practitioners now are more pro-active about encouraging patients to have an asthma plan. But more needs to be done, with fewer than one in five asthmatics aged 15 and older having a written plan.

bushfire-smoke-astham — Bushfire smoke at Yangan, drifting in from Spicer’s Gap. Photo by Bob Wilson

(Note to self: this includes you, Bob. Make sure you have a spare puffer for times when (a) the puffer runs out (b) you have lost or misplaced it or c) the air looks like this).

The rate of deaths from asthma has remained stable since 2011. There were 441 deaths due to asthma in 2016-2017.

Mortality rates are higher for people living in remote or lower socioeconomic areas, and for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

Meanwhile, parts of Queensland and NSW remain shrouded in bushfire smoke. Numerous scientists and firefighters have voiced concerns that this may only be the beginnings of a long, dry and bushfire-prone summer. Climate change-denying pollies bewilderingly blamed the Greens for conspiring to limit hazard reduction burns. Cathy Wilcox brilliantly summed this up in a four frame satirical cartoon (2^nd one down the page).

The Guardian took the fact-checking route.

On November 11, the World Air Quality Index rated several areas of Brisbane including Rocklea, South Brisbane, Woolloongabba, Wynnum, Wynnum West, Lytton and Cannon Hill as ‘very unhealthy’.

The state’s chief health officer Jeannette Young told the ABC that everyone should stay indoors for the next 24 to 48 hours.

“Treat this seriously and don’t be complacent. Whether you’re in Logan or Lowood or anywhere in between, everyone needs to limit time spent outdoors while these conditions remain,” Dr Young said.

The term “particulate matter” – also known as particle pollution or PM, describes the extremely small solid particles and liquid droplets suspended in air. PM can include soil dust and allergens and their size affects their potential to cause health problems.

PM10 refers to particles with a diameter of 10 micrometres or less (small enough to pass through the throat and nose and enter the lungs).

PM2.5 refers to smaller particles able to enter the blood stream, causing serious adverse health effects over time.

So what’s ‘normal’ and how does that compare to Remembrance Day in Brisbane? The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the average PM2.5 level of cities across the globe measured over a 24-hour period is 35µg/m (or 3.5 micrograms per cubic metre). An ideal level of pollution (no negative health impacts), is 25µg/m.

The Brisbane CBD was at a PM10 and 180µg/m at 9:00am on Monday – 10 times the amount of pollution on an average day.

As we so often blithely say: ‘it’s a first-world problem’.

The WHO estimates that 1.6 million people die every year in India from air pollution. India has some of the most polluted cities in the world. This report from the BBC attributes air pollution in Delhi to motor vehicles, construction and industrial emissions, the burning of crop stubble and the residue of fireworks set off for a Hindu festival.

In early November P2.5 levels in Delhi were seven times higher than Beijing in early November, the report said.

If you were paying attention, those comparisons also applied to Brisbane on Remembrance Day, 2019. Lest we forget.

Further reading: https://blissair.com/what-is-pm-2-5.htm

https://bobwords.com.au/whipping-dust-storm/

Movember and a short history of facial hair

Movember-moustaches — Grandad Wilson with a circa 1920 moustache

Fourteen years ago a couple of Aussies came up with ‘Movember’ – a campaign to raise awareness of men’s health issues including prostate cancer and depression. There are many ways to take part in Movember (which lasts for the month of November). The most visible way is to join other men who are growing a Mo for 30 days and ask people to pledge support.

No better time to introduce Grandad Wilson (;left), posing in his stonemason’s workshop in rural Scotland, circa 1920s. Now that’s what I call a moustache!

I have another, more sombre photo of Grandad in his WWI Corporal’s uniform in front of a small platoon of soldiers. Some of them are sporting a ‘Mo’, and, if I may observe, many of them are yet to make twenty years of age. I wonder how many of them made it to 20.

It was interesting to discover that from the Crimean war onwards, men in the military were forbidden to shave their upper lip. Attitude to hairy faces in the armed forces and police have changed many times since.

Moustaches were all the fashion in the early part of the 20^th century, thanks in part to silent era movie stars like Charlie Chaplin and Oliver Hardy. Both comedians’ sported Toothbrush moustaches – five centimetres of hair above the lip, trimmed vertically, thus mimicking the bristles of a toothbrush. This type of Mo virtually disappeared after 1945 because of the negative association with the toothbrush moustache cultivated by the defeated Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler.

Chaplin wore his Mo with pride in the 1940 satirical film, The Great Dictator. He alternately plays a Jewish barber who loses his memory and finds himself subject to tyranny, and the tyrant himself, Adenoid Hynkel. Nearly 80 years on, Chaplin’s first full-length talking film is still rated at 93% by movie review site Rotten Tomatoes.

What got me thinking about Movember and moustaches in general was the November 2 appearance of rugby league coach Brad Fitler on TV, sporting the wispy beginnings of a moustache. Taking a gentle ribbing from panel commentators on Nine’s broadcast of the triple-header league international, Fitler said, ’it’s for a good cause’.

To become a Mo Bro, you must first sign up as a clean shaven dude as of November 1 then start growing and grooming a Mo.

The movement got its start in 2003 when mates Travis Garone and Luke Slattery met up for a quiet beer in Melbourne. The moustache was unfashionable at the time, but they found 30 blokes willing to take up the challenge. From humble beginnings, Movember has branched out into 20 different countries and raised $600 million for charities like the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

As Fitler says, it’s a good cause, raising awareness of men’s’ health issues, symptoms of which a lot of men ignore, often at their peril.

Cancer Council statistics estimate that 1 in 7 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer. The good news about this form of cancer, which comprises 25% of all male cancers, is that it is slow-growing, so unsurprisingly there is a 95% chance of reaching the five year mark. Unlike some forms of cancer, prostate cancer can be quickly picked up by a blood test which all men over 45 should have every year.

Movember also aims to lift awareness about depression in men and the risk of suicide, still the leading cause of death in Australians aged 15 to 44. Men are three times more likely to commit suicide than women. It has been estimated that around 60,000 Australians attempt suicide every year. So it serves a useful purpose simply by putting these issues under your nose, as it were.

Movember’s rules quite rightly stipulate no fake moustaches, beards or goatees. They also state the Mo must be kept groomed and that participants must ‘act like gentlemen’.

Mo’s come in all shapes and sizes. In my experience of cultivating a Chevron in the 1990s (left), they take longer than a month to become vigorous, so don’t expect too much from Movember participants (especially those who start late). Film stars have helped to give the moustache some cachet through the eras where they were prominent on the silver screen. Clark Gable enhanced his suave country gentlemen looks in Gone with the Wind. His was a Pencil moustache, also favoured by actors including Errol Flynn and David Niven, writer George Orwell and musician Little Richard. The Pencil Mo is defined by a carefully shaved gap between the two sides.

Chaplin and Hardy, as we mentioned, wore the now-taboo Toothbrush Mo. Tom Selleck sported a handsome Chevron in Magnum PI, starting a 1990s comeback of the coarse-haired, thick moustache.

Wrestler Hulk Hogan is often mentioned for his magnificent Fu Man Chu that droops down either side of his mouth. Actor Sam Elliott has worn a Fu Man Chu for so long it is now snowy white, still enhancing his twinkling smile. And what a contrast between the suave, smooth-shaven 007 and Sean Connery’s moustachioed character in The Untouchables. Musician Frank Zappa gets a mention in this list by artofmanliness.com, but on Movember’s definition it’s a fail, as he also had a ‘soul patch’ under his bottom lip.

I recommend scrolling through this list of celebrities known for their moustaches. The impressive Handlebar moustache worn by German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche (left) stands out from the crowd. Imagine kissing that! In my long experience of having a beard and mo of varying lengths, there are certain foods that men with facial hair like Frederick should avoid:

Spaghetti bolognaise
Soup (minestrone in particular)
Tacos
Icecream
Lamingtons
Pavlova and cream cakes in general

It is interesting to note that the list of hirsute blokes listed by artofmanliness.com does not include Groucho Marx or famous fictitious characters like Hercules Poirot and Boston Blackie. As it turns out, Groucho’s famous set of bristles was fake (at least in the early days), which is curious when you think how his combination of eyebrows, glasses, Mo and cigar so often feature at fancy dress parties. Likewise, Chaplin’s Toothbrush mo was painted on in the early days of films featuring his character, The Tramp, mainly to disguise his age (he was 24 in the first silent film in 1914).

Poirot’s waxed moustache (often described in Agatha Christie’s books as ‘magnificent’, ‘immense’ or ‘splendid’), is an integral part of the series.As Poirot says to Hastings (in Peril at End House): “If you must have a moustache, let it be a real moustache – a thing of beauty such as mine.”

Kenneth Branagh’s turn as Poirot in the 2017 remake Murder on the Orient Express, acknowledged the importance of Poirot’s facial hair to the character’s character. To that end, numerous movie sites let it slip that Branagh had some cosmetic help with that.

I mentioned Boston Blackie, featured in Jimmy Buffet’s song ‘Pencil-thin moustache’, a tribute to the first half of the 20^th century.

Boston Blackie was a fictional character created by author Jack Boyle. A jewel thief and safecracker, Blackie became a detective in adaptations for films, radio and television. And yes, like Clark Gable, Errol Flynn and others, he had a Pencil moustache. It is not recorded whether his was au natural or faked with greasepaint.

As Buffett says of male grooming in an era ‘when only jazz musicians were smokin’ marijuana’ – ‘Brylcream, a little dab’ll do ya’.

(Live at the Byron Bay Blues fest, 2017) https://youtu.be/YKn15lEBL9s