Watermelon Man

Roses blooming outside my window. Birds nesting and singing outside my window. Grass and clover growing outside my window. Echidnas and stumpy tail lizards strolling outside my window. Must be Spring, hooray.

But unlike the chirpy weather presenters on television I don't say "hooray, Summer is coming". That lovely thick grass that is creating contented fat sheep will soon begin to dry. I will watch as the hillsides go from green to brown, leaving just a fine network of green lines along the gullies; and then from brown to yellow with no green lines. And just down the road, last weekend, billowing clouds of smoke from a neighbour's paddock gave me an awful scare until I realised that the number of fire trucks meant it was a training exercise burn. Fire season underway in Victoria, and Queensland has had major bush fires already. And the snake in the grass is climate change, the warmer and drier it gets, the more, and more severe, bushfires we will get all over southern Australia.

If stumpy tails are strolling on my door step then snakes will soon be slithering over it, and a few days ago I saw the first one hurrying over my driveway. Always seems to be the way with farming - rain gets the pasture growing but also can lead to worms in sheep and will certainly lead to long dry grass that can be a fire hazard. Warm weather brings on the growth of flowers but also brings the snakes out of hibernation.

Is it just me that dreads summer? Maybe it is, maybe the whole population of Yass would be cheering on the Sydney weather presenter who in the record high temperatures a week or so ago strolled on to Bondi Beach, wriggled her high heels firmly into the sand, and proceeded to tell us how wonderful it was that it was already hot enough for the beach and Summer couldn't come fast enough. Funny isn't it that these people always present the weather from the beach on these sweltering days and not, say, from a bare paddock on the hills around Yass.

Come to think of it, isn't it funny that the climate change deniers (of whom my one time favourite National Barnaby is now sadly a leader) always make their pronouncements about how there is no such thing as global warming from the air conditioned environment of parliament house in Spring, and not from that same bare Yass paddock in Summer? Same reason I suppose.

Look I know Winter can have its down side on the southern tablelands. What's that you say? "Grim"? Well, yes, it can be grim. But you can always dress up warmly, stoke up a fire, close the curtains early on a dark evening, eat a roast hot from the oven. And Spring and Autumn can also have miserable windy and wet days. But those nine months don't have you watching your step for brown snakes in the long grass, or wondering whether one is visiting the shed to hunt mice around the feed bags.

And they don't have you anxiously scanning the horizon for columns of smoke, don't have you wondering whether you can smell smoke, don't have you feverishly reading weather bulletins to see how high the danger levels are going to be. Summer is tension for me, digging my fingers into the yard rail, not digging my toes into Bondi Beach, and I don't relax again until well into Autumn, endlessly grateful that the bush fire brigade people are hard at work on our behalf.

I bet they hate Summer too.

All David Horton's writing is on The Watermelon Blog.

I heard a representative of the Company Directors union the other day say that there should be no restriction of any kind on the salaries of CEOs. No one, except company directors, had any right to say anything about what they, the company directors, and the CEOs earned. Certainly not shareholders. And absolutely no input from public interest or ethics or morality or even economics.

There seems to have been a whole procession of these spokespersons in recent times - foresters against conserving trees, nuclear physicists in favour of nuclear power, coal mine owners against reducing coal use, television executives in favour of advertising to children, cattlemen against national parks, coal mine unions against reducing coal use, supermarkets against accurate labelling, seed companies against GM restrictions, irrigators against reasonable water use, bankers against financial regulation, oil companies executives against petrol price controls, sugar cane farmers against reducing pesticide runoff, health fund owners against public medicine, housing company owners in favour of massive population growth, whaling company executives supporting whaling, private school principals in favour of grants to private schools, hotel spokesmen against any alcohol restrictions, and so on.

And each time I see one of them on television I look for something to throw (have to ask my dog to give me my shoe back), change channels, turn the sound down. I know that they will say the most outrageous things. Black will become white, up become down, damage become good, yes become no, fiction become fact, lies become truth. The results of extensive scientific research will be dismissed in a sentence, public opinion dismissed in a word. If these people have children and grandchildren they conveniently forget them and their future, if they have a conscience it is securely packed away in Swiss bank vault, if they once had any sense of right and wrong, or of public interest, it has long since been isolated from the rest of their brains by the scar tissue of a hundred board meetings. They are people, who, somewhat like diplomats, have been sent out to lie for their companies, and lie they do. If their company wants to bulldoze all the forests of Tasmania then so do they; if the planet is warming and their company pumps out CO2 then so be it, CO2 is good for the planet; GM food is good for everyone; children aren't obese and aren't influenced by adverts; the Murray River isn't drying and dying; petrol is cheap; cattle should devour national parks; the Barrier Reef isn't under threat from run-off; whales are abundant; nuclear power is problem free. They are people who must have another planet to go when this one is stuffed, because they clearly don't see themselves as being affected by any of the activities of companies they represent, rather like the lawyers representing Al Capone.

I keep hoping, foolishly, for one of them, just one, to do a Mal Meninga, who on the brink of running for political office, recoiled back and said no, I can't do this any more. And just walk away from the companies who are willfully causing so much damage to human beings, our society, and the world we live in. But they don't, too enamoured of, too addicted to, it seems, their seat at the high table with the bosses, their Armani suits and Harbour mansions and Porsche Boxers. So we need to get them on the path to rehabilitation, flush the drug out of their systems, for their own good, and ours.

And I thought how about there be a two strikes law? If one of these people makes two ridiculous anti-public interest statements in favour of greed and destruction then they have to go and work for the opposition. For consumer groups, and conservation activists, and organic farmers, and sustainable energy developers, and shareholder groups. And they have to for some period, say a year, work actively and wholeheartedly for the groups they once opposed.

Two advantages. They themselves might, just might, see the error of their ways, and never go back to their unconscionable behaviour. And second, the opposing groups could learn a great deal about how to oppose these organisations effectively, learn their secrets, find their dirty linen, setting a thief to catch a thief. There might even come a day when no one could be found to do these dirty jobs anymore. When companies are exposed to full public accountability and exposure with no bouncer to hide behind.

Don't hold your breath though - there still seem to be spokespeople for cigarette companies around.

All David Horton's writing is on The Watermelon Blog.

I have had a crashed computer for two weeks. Once upon  time, oh, say,
ten years ago, that would have meant just a mild inconvenience of having
to hand write a letter instead of word processing (remember that term?)
and that would have been that. But these days it leaves you feeling
isolated from the world outside the house. No more instant communication
with friends in Perth, or Paris;  no more reading, as published,
newspapers online in Britain or America; no more responding to other
bloggers or to petitions; no online banking or registering for a
conference.We have become so used to being instantly part of the world
community that I felt as if I had been plunged back into the 1920s.

Exactly 80 years ago my family were on a crowded migrant ship coming
from Britain. The boat people of their day they were part of a scheme by
a Premier of WA to populate the south west. Every generation thinks that
the previous generation of migrants were the best ones. Had some kind of
pure motives, untainted by consideration of economics, just keen to be
part of the young and free people of the great southern land, instantly
leaving any thought of original homelands behind them, and with much
needed skills that instantly had them functioning as part of the
Australian community.

But it wasn't quite like that in the 1920s, and I doubt that it ever has
been. My family were escaping the misery of the coal mining industry,
and the poor wages and terrible living conditions of the north of
England then. Almost all the other passengers, crowded onto this old
ship, were similar - they had come from mines, or factories, or shops or
offices. They were hoping for better climate, more chances for the kids,
but they weren't happy about coming. And they were put onto uncleared
small blocks of land and, with no farming skills, and no money, told to
establish dairy farms. And, while they were still at sea, Wall Street
collapsed as a result of that earlier period of greed and madness and
the global financial crisis granddaddy them all began. And, perhaps
worst of all, they were essentially on their own. Communications back to
the land of their birth involved the exchange of handwritten letters
which could take months. They had, and knew they had, cut themselves off
from all the family and friend support networks (very strong in mining
communities) that they had always relied on. Internet connections and
video links would have made a huge difference.

But the country was strange, and hot, and had snakes, and the locals
weren't too friendly to the ten pound Poms, so for many years they stuck
together with people they had met on board, people with shared
backgrounds and experiences, especially when things got really grim and
the men of the family had to go on the road working hard labour for the
dole.

I have no doubt that later migrant generations of eastern and southern
Europeans, and then VIetnamese, and now Afghans and Sri Lankans, could
all tell similar stories (often with the horrors of war added) about
their arrivals in the land of beauty rich and rare. Big difference now
is that there are shock jocks and shock politicians, screaming abuse at
the new arrivals, calling them diseased and dangerous and dole bludgers,
and, sickeningly, terrorists.

Wonder if any of Wilson Tuckey's ancestors were on the wharf at
Fremantle when my ancestors arrived, dazed, and depressed and somewhat
desperate? Must email him to find out, if I ever have a working computer
again.

Look, everyone knows I am no financial whiz kid, not even a financial fizzing old man, but there are some things I do know. One is that the Liberal Party has yet again demonstrated the hypocrisy it has shown so often since it found itself in the depths of opposition. Overnight, it seemed, things they wouldn't do in government became essential; things they had done became taboo. And with the financial crisis they have excelled themselves. These are people who demanded no action, were quite happy to let "the market", that mythical sole arbiter of truth and decency in our society, deal with the crisis by watching thousands lose their jobs and houses. That is, happy to let the average person on Comur Street pay all the price for something they hadn't done; while the heads of banks and other giant corporations, whose greed had caused the problem, laughed all the way to discreet banks in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands. The last thing Mr Turnbull and friends would have done was provide money to ordinary people to keep the retail sector ticking over until the resource sector kicked back in again.

But it doesn't mean I think the government is beyond criticism, nowhere near beyond criticism in fact. The individual cash handouts could have been better targeted so that on the one hand some didn't end up stimulating Italy (that's Berlusconi's job, yes, that is a double entendre) and on the other there wasn't a low end cut-off in which people as poor as church mice, like your columnist from Grub Street, didn't receive anything. If I was marking young Wayne's assignment, I would have said "good attempt, marred by some silly errors caused by lack of attention to detail, must try harder. 9/10". Young Malcolm on the other hand wouldn't get more than 1/10, especially for the nonsense about the stimulus causing interest rates to rise.

But the lack of attention to detail has been evident in much of the stimulus. The anecdotes about poorly chosen school projects (again hypocrisy from the Liberals, who left public schools to run down for 11 years while building Olympic swimming pools and rowing sheds at Kings School) are just the tip of the iceberg I suspect. And this week came stories of poorly installed roof insulation, by unqualified, but now richer, "tradesmen", causing house fires. Again, both criticisms, from a party that would have totally relied on private enterprise in the same way, and howled in outrage at any suggestion of government regulation and control of private contractors, were thick with hypocrisy, but that doesn't make them wrong. This has been sloppy work, like stimulus cheques sent overseas, and it seems to have been caused, in the case of the schools, by an unwillingness to let individual schools know best what they needed, and to let the NSW Education department, for example, impose hasty and irrational decisions from the top down. In the case of the insulation there seems to have been an unwillingness to believe that there could be such a thing as a shonky operator when big bundles of cash were up for grabs unsupervised. Who could have predicted that?

So a great pity, and lost opportunities to simultaneously help to stimulate the economy via the building industry, and do enormous good for public schools and the conservation of energy and reduction of greenhouse gas production. Remember Ozymandias, the statue of a once mighty king out in the desert? I think the Rudd memorials similarly are going to be the shells of burnt out roofs, and unwanted classrooms and libraries, all with notices saying "My name is Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Prime Ministers: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!".

And I do.

All David Horton's writing is on The Watermelon Blog.

Well, at last I am all booked in for The 2010 Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne, Australia, March 12 - 14, 2010. They had, amazingly, already sold out of gold passes, so you had better get in quick. I hope many of my readers will see me there, oh, as well as checking out Dawkins and a number of others on a star-studded program.

There would be those, I imagine, who would think I am being politically incorrect, but I think it is time to bring back political correctness, or, more correctly, just correctness. I had finally reached this conclusion when a tv reporter said that he knew it was "politically incorrect" but he liked the old steam trains, driven by mountains of coal. No, Peter, I yelled at the tv, its not correct because we have to cut out the use of coal altogether, faced with a melting planet, and this kind of sentimental rubbish doesn't help. But the turning point, the moment when I yelled out my window "I'm mad as hades and I'm not going to take it anymore" came when I saw the television skit with white Australians painted up in blackface playing the Jacksons including the recently dead Michael, in an appalling performance (including groin clutching) that would have seemed gross even in the first piece of television I ever saw, the "Black and White Minstrels", over 50 years ago. And when Australian commentators, and Julia Gillard, were puzzled as to why Americans might think this was offensive.

Like all my dear readers I was brought up to behave correctly, and politely, the two being synonymous, towards other people, especially those "less fortunate than myself". And as I grew older I learned that there were more subtle considerations, that the kind of language used in relation to Aborigines, and migrants, and the disabled, those with different sexual orientation, the poor, and even, in those distant days, women, had consequences, mattered to them, and to the society we all shared. Affected how they were treated, what opportunities they had.

John Howard, who I supposed must have been raised, more or less, as I was, threw out politeness and correctness (calling them, incorrectly, politically correctness) for political purposes in 1996. Let's call a spade a spade, he said, having calculated, correctly as it turned out, that attacking people who were polite, and allowing the impolite ones to attack the easy (and popular) targets in Australian society, was a way to steal Pauline Hanson's thunder, and some of her votes, and obtain and retain power. And in using this cynical ploy he unleashed the demons who had long been frustrated at being unable to use all the carefully honed terms for women and people of any group but WASP, and then all hell broke loose on the airwaves, in the pubs, and on the streets of Cronulla and elsewhere.   But he is long gone, little Johnny (see, in the days before political correctness ended I wouldn't have drawn attention to his height, won't again, after this), on his way, it seems, to permanently rub shoulders with the big men of rugby league. So we don't need to follow his prescriptions about political discourse in Australia any more. Can all of us go back to being polite and making our grandmother's proud of us? Can we go back to avoiding words that cause pain and misery and help to keep the victims of prejudice prejudiced against? Can go back to the Australian ideas of mateship and a fair go and not hitting a man (or woman) when they are down? Can we go back to not judging on skin colour or language or sex or physical attributes?

Can we go back in fact to ... Ah, no, wait, let me re-phrase that. Can we go forward to radio stations and newspapers and reality television shows that don't thrive on sneering and demeaning and assaulting people with words, and to election campaigns that are not fought by demonising some members of our society? Can we resume trying to go forward to a society in which there are equal rights and opportunities for all?

So the next time you hear a ranter on the radio, turn him off, and the next time you see a vicious newspaper columnist, avoid reading her, the media owners will soon get the message that politeness is back to stay. And think about your own words. As my grandmother used to say - if you can't say something nice about someone don't say anything at all. Or, as some say, better to keep your mouth closed and have people think you are stupid than open it and remove all doubt. Don't use racist and sexist language yourself, don't tell nasty jokes about women or immigrants or Aborigines, and don't put up with it when your mates down the pub indulge themselves. You'll be able to look at yourself in the mirror next morning without embarrassment.

A bit of correctness might have stopped Mr Sandilands (see, already I am being polite) from wanting to send Magda Szubansky to a concentration camp, might have stopped him strapping a 14 year old girl to a lie detector, and asking her, live on air, about her sex life. Might have stopped Hey Hey approving mockery of MJ and Kamahl. You want to argue with me on that? Feel free.

But mind your Ps and Qs.

All David Horton's writing is on The Watermelon Blog.

I am close to putting Barnaby Joyce on my list of least favourite politicians (Wilson Tuckey, Steve Fielding, Eric Abetz ... it's a long list). Climate change denial and a proposal to raise the PM's salary to a million dollars in his latest interview. The reason? So we can attract those big businessmen who gave us the global financial crisis into politics. The public, rightly, is very suspicious, and angry, that politicians have ultimate control over their own remuneration, and the latest 3% rise has raised the usual anger. I don't share that concern. I think many (oh, alright, some) politicians both work hard and do a good job, and their salary should match those of other hard working people in the community like nurses and scientists and aged carers and teachers and police. No question about that, fair's fair.

But what I do worry about is politicians controlling the electoral system of Australia. If you want to see the end result of that look no further than America and Zimbabwe. And they are at it again this year with a review of the electoral system to be carried out to address all kinds of issues, of which only one, possibly two, is valid.

Just to remind you. The most important features of our electoral system are those which make it the fairest in the world. They are compulsory attendance (not compulsory voting) at a polling centre during the election period; preferential voting; a totally independent electoral office; a paper record of every vote cast; a transparent counting and recording of votes; public funding of candidates in proportion to their popularity; some control of the fairness and extent of advertising, and a transparency of its origin. If you were setting out to design a fair election process now you couldn't do better than that, and the absence of many of its features (for example in America and Britain, and Zimbabwe) make elections in many other parts of the world a poor representation of the needs and views of people in those countries.

Beware of people who want to tinker with this. Especially reject the introduction of electronic voting (a disaster for American democracy, notably in the election of George Bush); of the loss of preferential voting (again, first past the post systems are extremely unfair in countries like Britain and the US); of the loss of compulsory attendance (in most countries without this, the tiny attendance and consequent biased voting patterns, ensure rule by the rich for the rich); of the weakening of regulations for fair advertising (if you think there is some bad stuff now take a look at American elections where there is open slather to lie and lie and lie about opponents).

There is a need to have a look at funding for the major parties and how this is recorded and publicised. I wouldn't allow any outside funding, and I would prefer that all parties rely on their own membership fees and public funding. Again, the influence of big money and lobbyists in American politics is not something we want to see repeated here (think NSW politics and developers), and we are on a slippery slope already. Dropping the voting age to 16 is possibly worth discussing, but when I think that at that age I told my grandmother to vote for Menzies it is clear that 16 year olds are too immature to be trusted with the vote.

There is an old saying in the law "cui bono?" "who benefits?" Meaning if you want to solve a crime the best place to look is at those who stand to gain from murder or corruption or robbery. If you want to know what to do about the Australian electoral system find out who would benefit from the proposed changes (and who is against more funding transparency). It is the two major political parties and big corporations. Tell both that we like things the way we are thank you very much, as long as they get money out of Australian politics.

Perhaps if we agreed to another pay rise on condition that Australian elections stay as they are?

All David Horton's writing is on The Watermelon Blog.

The very first car I ever owned, at the age of 18, was dropped off at our house by the second hand dealer. "Better put some petrol in it soon" he said, riding off into the sunset in another, much bigger, car. The nearest petrol station was some 5km away, in those far off days, so I set out immediately, and finding the gauge was on zero, switched to the reserve tank (yes, it was an old VW), only to find out that the used car dealer I had bought a car from had also drained the reserve. Well, brand new driver's licence in my pocket, I didn't know much about cars, but I did know that if you were running out of petrol it was best to drive fast in order to make it to the pump before you ran out. And the rest, dear reader, you can guess.

Was reminded of this sad introduction to driving the other day when we were hit with an unexpected prediction of some 40 million people in Australia in a much shorter time in the future than the time elapsed since I first pushed a car uphill into a garage. This was greeted with great enthusiasm by all the usual suspects, one saying, no worries, by then there will be 9 billion people on the planet we can sell lots more coal to pay for our 40 million. "Global warming", I want to say, "hasn't anyone in parliament heard of global warming except Wilson Tuckey?" But then another even sillier suggestion came that this was a jolly good thing because there would be lots more young people to look after all the old people they had been worried about. "But what happens when those young people get old?", I yelled at the tv, "are you going to have even more young people to care for those old young people? Isn't that like driving faster as you run out of petrol?".

But occasionally a good thought, among all the craziness that infests tv news bulletins these days (yes, I'm getting old). Britain is thinking of alternative strategies for the elderly. We live forever, us old people, these days, 75 is the old 65, 85 the old 75, and so on. An enquiry included "Policy should treat 75 as the normal upper age limit for economic activity, replacing the outmoded 60 to 65". And as a result, many more old people will need to learn new skills, for both work and pleasure. So, some excellent practical suggestions too: Funding should be switched from young students to older age groups. A birthday bonus should be paid into individual learning accounts  when people reach a significant age (such as 50) to help pay for education courses. Those aged 75 and over should benefit from extra cash aid to help them study. Official employment statistics should include all those up to the age of 75.

So, all us oldies need to stop relying on the maths we learnt in 1955, or the science of 1960, and seriously go back to the old schoolyard. There needs to be much more support here for TAFE courses aimed at the over 50s, and more support for University of the Third Age, education on the internet, training built into employment for old apprentices. I'm sure you can think of more.

And a significant number of us need to keep up to date with environmental issues, climate change, demographics - these young politicians and businessmen need to learn about pushing cars.

All David Horton's writing is on The Watermelon Blog.

Saw a piece the other day that will gladden the hearts of messy gardeners (like me) and ease the strain on those who strive for garden perfection. It was a study of British gardens, but since most Australian gardens are a facsimile of British gardens, in style and content, the findings apply just as much to Sydney or Yass as they might do in Birmingham or Stockton on Forest. I can sum up the findings very briefly - "Untidy gardens are best". There, doesn't that make you feel better as the tidal wave of Spring weeds overwhelms your garden beds, lawns grow so fast they seem determined to singlehandedly reduce CO2 in the air to 350ppm, and shrubs and trees grow inches every night?

Here are the suggestions in more detail:
*Plant large shrubs and let them grow big. Shrubs and trees produce more vegetation where wildlife can live and eat.

*Allow at least some flowers to turn to seed and the lawn to grow tall. Don't be in a hurry to clear up fallen leaves. Don't be too tidy: don't be in a hurry to clear up everything when the garden stops flowering. Just leave a bit of stuff lying around.

*Create a pond for insects, frogs and toads. Think before stocking it with fish which will eat insect eggs and larvae.

*Don't illuminate your garden at night with bright lights. This will disturb many nocturnal creatures, such as moths.

*Create a compost heap – they are miniature nature reserves in themselves. Compost also enriches the soil.

*Keep hard surfaces (decking, paths, driveways, paved areas) to a minimum.

The author of the study, Ken Thompson of Sheffield University, said that Britain's 16 million gardens are a haven for hundreds of species of animals and plants that would find it impossible to survive on intensively farmed land  "Gardens are amazingly diverse even compared to natural habitats that are good for wildlife. Gardens are more interesting on a small scale because they are so variable. All the wildlife responds to these variables ... Compared with an equivalent area of modern intensive farming, gardens are much, much better in terms of everything you measure, whether it is spiders, bugs or birds," he said "It sounds heretical, but from a biodiversity perspective most farmland would be improved by having a housing estate built on it" . I don't think I can add much to that, except to say that most Australian farms could be improved by having some untidy areas too. In Britain the study found that it didn't matter whether native or exotic plants were used. Here, because of the nature of our bird species, a good proportion of native shrubs and flowers would be very important.

So no more tidy towns - let your hair down and your grass and shrubs up and help to maintain biodiversity in your area. Tell your wife I said so.

All David Horton's writing is on The Watermelon Blog.

For all those out there keenly following the weekly adventures of the Watermelon Man as I charge windmills in cloud cuckoo land and beyond, a new service. On Twitter you can become a follower of the Watermelon Man and get my odd thoughts, ideas, comments, notices, all expressed very economically in less than 140 characters. Don't hesitate to sign up for minutes of fun each day. And as a bonus you can also sign up, if you really must, to follow less worthy celebrities like Britney Spears and Kevin Rudd.