What Do You Think Today?

[Kizza]

It is pretty cold down around our way at the moment.
The colder weather, added to the lifting of restrictions from this pandemic makes the fire season we just came through seem so long ago. It surprises me really because it gets pretty raw thinking back then to the December bushfires. So many people, friends and acquaintances were burnt out of their homes. People stayed to protect their houses when they should have left.
60km/h winds on a 45+c day, in a place where drought has long settled = one scary place to be. Dried tree limbs drop on power lines in the middle of the bush and off it went.
They say the tinders were carrying between 2 and 10kms in that wind so spot fires were kicking off everywhere. It started about 50kms from home, and was within 10kms of us in around 40 minutes. I had started our fire systems, and packed the car because there was no way I was prepared or able to fight that kind of fire to save the house.
The sky was orange-grey. Then the wind which had been coming from the north changed, and pointed the fire east and away from us, creating a giant front which terrorised too many townships and would take over 8 weeks to go out.
It leaves a shared and knowing fear in most peoples eyes, and a renewed love and respect for the country fire service.

[Avatar]

Which they'll forget until the next time, but hey, that's how it goes.

Yeah, can't believe we basically half-way through the year already. What a mess.

--A

[Skyweir]

Not exactly ... I havent forgotten and in fact Ive been writing and submitting lessons learned, debrief inquiry submissions and engaging with working groups at the state level and hoping soon at the national level to drive proactive processes and a better way forward from those lessons learned.

I dont look forward to another fire season like the 2019/20 one but it would be foolish to ignore that very real likelihood.

We need to be prepared. We absolutely were NOT prepared and we bumbled from one fatal flaw to the next. But thats how stuff happens on the run and the inefficiency of reactionary response.

We will likely fuck up again but if we can fuck up less .. tis a start and a step in the right direction ... there are sooo many things I would do differently with wildlife recovery but thats a different focus.

[Lazy Luke]

26th May - National Sorry Day - Australia

We will likely fuck up again but if we can fuck up less .. tis a start and a step in the right direction ...

Apology accepted ...

[Kizza]

Which they'll forget until the next time, but hey, that's how it goes.

Yeah, can't believe we basically half-way through the year already. What a mess.

--A

Av, ordinarily i would agree with you on that point. But this was a very different fire season. It will last long in many memories. Not just of the people around our way either.

Anyway, roll on the next long weekend!!

[Skyweir]

Yah now youre talking

[Skyweir]

Anyone remember the poetress Pam Ayres?
Well, she's 73 and still going strong.
This is her latest ode to coronavirus...



I'm normally a social girl
I love to meet my mates
But lately with the virus here
We can't go out the gates.

You see, we are the 'oldies' now
We need to stay inside
If they haven't seen us for a while
They'll think we've upped and died.

They'll never know the things we did
Before we got this old
There wasn't any Facebook
So not everything was told.

We may seem sweet old ladies
Who would never be uncouth
But we grew up in the 60s -
If you only knew the truth!

There was sex and drugs and rock 'n roll
The pill and miniskirts
We smoked, we drank, we partied
And were quite outrageous flirts.

Then we settled down, got married
And turned into someone's mum,
Somebody's wife, then nana,
Who on earth did we become?

We didn't mind the change of pace
Because our lives were full
But to bury us before we're dead
Is like a red rag to a bull!

So here you find me stuck inside
For four weeks, maybe more
I finally found myself again
Then I had to close the door!

It didn't really bother me
I'd while away the hour
I'd bake for all the family
But I've got no flaming flour!

Now Netflix is just wonderful
I like a gutsy thriller
I'm swooning over Idris
Or some random sexy killer.

At least I've got a stash of booze
For when I'm being idle
There's wine and whiskey, even gin
If I'm feeling suicidal!

So let's all drink to lockdown
To recovery and health
And hope this awful virus
Doesn't decimate our wealth.

We'll all get through the crisis
And be back to join our mates
Just hoping I'm not far too wide
To fit through the flaming gates!

[Kizza]

Ha! I played rugby with a fellow who had that Pam Ayres Berko accent. I used to love the way he'd say "cider"... kinda like "Sigh-Darr".... With the rolling eyes n'all! He was a hard so and so too.

I have been sleeping like a kid who just started school. Almost at the end of my first week back in an office after about two months in isolation and I have been pretty tired by the time i walk back through the door at home. I think it is all down to the commute and not being used to it. I am sure a different challenge will arise next week.

Mind you, the pubs around our way open next friday night!! You have to order a meal to get a table, and you can only be served drinks at a table, which is in a room with no more than 20 people in it observing social distancing.... So i will probably stick to the shed and guitars for a while longer.

[Avatar]

Cheaper and all too.

--A

[Avatar]

@Peter in case you miss it in the HDYF thread. kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1114274#1114274

--A

[peter]

Excellent news Av! Once the recovery process gets into swing it will proceed apace!

[Kizza]

Damn cats.
Walkin' through the house at 5am screaming "FEED ME" and then moving into the tiled bathroom, for which the door must have been left slightly ajar, howling "ISN'T ANYONE AWAKE YET?" Or maybe it was "I CANT HEAR MYSELF HOWLMEOW, QUICK SOMEBODY FEED ME!"
Had the three of 'em locked up the other end of the house for nearly every night this past week. No early morning wake up calls. It has been great!
And then the youngest son leaves one of two important doors open last night. Purring and howl-bloody-meowing.
You can have your Siamese back. Cost me a bloody fortune, hog all the fireplace, and then wake the house an hour before the sun comes up. "Oh but aren't they funny?" I get asked... Guess who has who conned?
....... and the boy slept through it all.

[Avatar]

I feel you pain. And I live in a flat, locking them in the other end of the house does not work for me.

--A

[Kizza]

I think the world has gone madder than it was yesterday.
The media went from pumping Covid masks, to riot masks.

I watched that phone footage of the cop with his knee on the neck of George Floyd. I wish all the people near to or affected by that the will to find the right outcome. That probably means everyone in the US. I dodged it for days as I feared it might haunt me... well it has.

[peter]

They keep repeating the video on UK news reports and I find it simply too terrible to watch. And today we have that prick Trump outside a church holding up a copy of the Bible! As a guy on the radio observed he is about as diametrically opposite to every teaching that is in that book as it is possible to be! Asshole!

[peter]

I listened to a radio talk show yesterday as I do quite often, in which the issue of BAME perception and relations in the UK were discussed and was moved by a lady who gave a sobering account of how a ceiling existed, the breaking through of which was an impossible dream for many talented and driven individuals of the black and ethnic minority groups, simply because of the almost unconsciously placed hurdles in their path, not specifically designed to halt their progress, but having this effect because the limitations they placed applied more simply to their communities.

She highlited the radio presenters job itself. Why, she asked did LBC Radio radio not have more presenters from minority ethnic backgrounds? Not, she said, because they were inherently biased against them, but that they were inherently biased toward a more specific subset of the population - that and the reason that to become a successful radio presenter requires years of voluntary work in hospital radio and other unpaid charity networks that people of the BAME community simply could not afford to contribute. She then went on to comment on how their was an unconscious perception amongst the white community of BAME people having to fit into a particular stereotype (furthered indeed by the media, where for example, in tv shows a Chinese family would have, by necessity to run a restaurant, or a black family to be Kingston speaking Rastas) in which they, as 'the other' become something 'slightly less than human'.

She went on to point out that the white community tacitly if unwittingly support this system with it's ceilings by refusal to recognise it as existing. When, she asked, was the last time a white person did not accept a job on the basis that their doing so would prevent it from being given to a black or other member of the BAME community?.........

Now here is my problem: this lady, who so eloquently put forward her case in terms that I could not but agree with, in my opinion simply blew it by failing to recognise the point at which her case was made. She simply went too far. For starters, I absolutely refute that it is common to see members of the BAME community as "slightly less than human". I believe that in the vast majority of the white community, while the differences between the ethnic groups of the country are recognised, in no way does this translate into a belief that any difference in their degree of humanity exists. (Do you know, as I write this I begin to have doubts; remember, I think, what you posted - experienced - back in the Brexit debate: was this expression of racism not based upon what this lady was implying?) What I can say however is that in my personal case I indubitably know of myself that this is not the case and maybe that's why I bridle at it.

On the second point, as to the white community not turning down jobs in order that they might be given to BAME community members I think I am on safer ground. It would be simply unreasonable to expect this; people as individuals are always going to do the best they can for themselves and their family. This is neither unreasonable nor wrong. What is wrong is that such considerations as skin colour and ethnicity should impinge upon such decisions at all: that merit and merit alone should be the only consideration in the awarding of jobs, placements in university and schools, of prizes and roles in theatre/film productions.

The debate that this lady so keenly commented upon is so important to the BAME communities it effects, that it must be conducted in a measured and thoughtful way - and the point at which the point has been made be recognised.

[Avatar]

As something of a connoisseur of casual racism, (unsurprising no doubt given my geographic location ), I think it worth suggesting that it is not necessary to consciously have such a view in order for it to continue to be perpetuated.

Every time you here people referred to as "they" ("You know what 'they're' like..." etc.) it's an expression of that othering which which is at heart a sign of that dehumanisation.

Having lived for a time in Hounslow in London, an area with a large Pakistani population, and having done so at a time when SA had only recently begun to embark on it's "rainbow" experiment, I certainly remember being surprised at the every-day racism I heard expressed, when as far as we'd been told, SA was surely the very epitome of racist thought in comparison to the "first world."

--A

[peter]

I also lived in the south-east for a number of years in the, what, eighties, and was horrified at the level of racism I found there. At that time the BNP were putting stickers and flyers in bus shelters and on lampposts with pictures of gorillas and the message go home on them. It's a very hard call however as to what balance you should strike between granting the recognition that is rightfully due to the differences that our various ethnicities bring to us while avoiding the kind of "them and us" mentality that as you say, is the beginning of the dehumanisation process. The BAME communities certainly deserve the full and equal measure of respect that we consider the natural right of every individual and group that go together in making up our societies - but equally certainly not by shoe-horning them into a mould that denies them recognition of their particular cultural contribution to the mixing pot of the whole.

[Avatar]

Like the poor, it's pretty likely that the race issue is going to be with us for some time yet.

--A

[peter]

Home Secretary Priti Patel has said that "justice must follow the anti-racism demonstrations" that occured over the weekend. Would that be justice for the abomination of slavery foisted onto the forebears of todays black community or simply retribution against those who, having failed three times by application to get the thing done legally, took matters into their own hands and toppled the obscene honouring and daily reminder of a man whose business was built (along with their city) on the profits of human trafficking.

Talking about justice, it seems that we might, with a bit of creative thinking, have the basis of a deal with the US in helping it's path on both sides of the Atlantic. How about we ship off Prince Andrew to them to answer the questions that the US prosecutors in the Epstein case wish to put to him and in return the US sends back to us Anne Sakoolas, wife of the US diplomat who fled back to America having knocked off and killed 19 yo. Harry Dunn while allegedly driving (no doubt accidentally) on the wrong side of the road. Seems like a fair swop to me.

(Returning quickly to the first topic, a caller on the James O'Brien show yesterday said that a possible reason why the statue was still standing was that to take such reminders down would be an official acknowledgement of the historical role that slavery played in the ammasing of the wealth of our country - and more particularly, focus attention on the still existing wealth of those same 'power families' who benefited from slavery in this country, and upon the roots on which their fortunes are based. O'Brien pointed out that the slave owners of the day were paid the equivalent of hundreds of millions in compensation for the economic hit to their estates upon the abolition of slavery, but the slaves themselves received not a penny. In fact he said, the servicing of the loans taken out to make these payments were not cleared until the nineteen seventies, delivering the bizare situation where the descendents of the very slaves themselves were contributing in their taxes toward the very payments made to those who had held them in slavery.)