According to the Melbourne Institute’s Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, the majority of Aussies are better off now than they were ten years ago. I am not one of those people.
I am in the process of applying for a disability pension. It is horrible enough filling in page after page of personal details for faceless bureaucracy. If I wasn't feeling small and losery and ashamed to begin with, this process would instill in me the levels of shame required for those who will claim support from the government. After all, you cannot make this process too easy or else everybody will be rushing from their cubicles onto the social security bandwagon.
As a further insult to my flaccid confidence levels, as part of my application I have to provide details of my sole trader economic status for the transcription work I've been doing from home for the past three years. Problem with that is that I haven't been keeping up with my tax payments. Money’s tight, especially when you have a chronic illness, and managing my money well has never been one of my strong suits. Which adds to my already flailing confidence because we are expected to juggle fiscal balls along with all the others imposed upon us by a system that serves those at the top far better than it suits me at the bottom. If we don't perform well in the areas that have been assigned to us as recognised markers of adultness – like being able to earn dosh – then we are failures, even if we happen to write some pretty good poetry, even if we say so ourselves.
This system pits its slaves one against the other, so that rather than feel sympathy for someone who’s struggling some may well be inclined to look down on me for being a financial mismanager. It may be an occasion for them to pat themselves on the back, glad that they are not me. It will also serve the purpose of getting them to focus on me, instead of the system we live under. It serves its purpose well, (although there are signs of it crumpling round the edges as more and more of us question why the way we live is so completely alienating to us, the tellers of our own stories).
Some may be inclined to be glad they’re not me because of my chronic illness/pension-claiming/tax-dodging status. Hell, I would. Being me is not something you aspire to. Unemployable (apparently, if job applications are anything to go by), I have been out on the edge of financial vulnerability for years. I am the type of person who perpetuates that starving artist in the garret scenario by stupidly choosing as their passion writing, which does not pay well, if at all, and which is notoriously difficult to break into, requiring a hide of steel that was not made available to my genetic subset. But then again, we do not seem to choose our passions; they choose us.
I am the type of person who feels sorry for themselves, who complains on my blog about my situation instead of sucking it up and getting on with it. But that's the problem with chronic illness – you can't always suck it up because you're ... well, you're not well. I am the type of person who you cannot begin to understand because my illness is invisible and it's chronic and you can look at me and say, "But you look so well!" while I feel sick, and poisoned, and toxic and unhealthy. I'm the type of person who is in bed for part of the day and then suddenly cleaning the bathroom at 10pm because I'm feeling up to it and feeling good and I want to contribute, and be useful, not a liability.
But I am the kind of person who has got myself into a bind so that before I can impose my small and defeated self upon the Department of Human Services I first have to fill in three tax returns and lodge them before I make a claim to the ATO to tell them that yes, paying this tax would mean that I would be not buying food or paying rent or paying for medications for myself. Yes, it surely would, and would they mind it if I didn't pay it at all, or else if I paid it in lump sum installments? And some most likely faceless person working in the cogs of those machinations will decide my future. And whichever way it pans out, I will feel shit. And some will judge me for not contributing.
Because there’s nothing we’re scared of more than someone else getting away with something we can’t.
But if it makes you feel better, whatever the ATO decides I will feel like I want to curl up into a small ball in the corner, a ball so small that I will complete some amazing magic trick of scientific law-defying and disappear into my very own black hole of economic unviability.
Showing posts with label government. Show all posts
Showing posts with label government. Show all posts
Police have launched a five-year plan to reduce violence against women and children in Victoria
You can put in place as many programs as you want. But real change only ever comes from within the heart, between people, not externally, handed down from an expert or an institutional authority, no matter how good or well-intentioned it is.
Domestic violence happens because men are at their wits end, because they do not know how to communicate, because the way we live totally fucks us up, because they are big babies, because there is not the right kind of support that comes from people you know instead of some psychologist across the other side of the desk, because 40 million other reasons.
Nothing will ever change unless something changes in us, unless people can see within themselves reasons to change. Programs run by the police are not the answer. Great social ties are the answer. The more programs there are run by the police, the more people believe that the answer must lie "out there" with the "experts" and not "in here" with me and the people I know coming to grips with ourselves.
I've been thinking lately about where I stand politically. I left lean and I vote left, but I am really right wing in my ideas about a limited form of government. But then it struck me the other day - my political ideas are not based in the political system. My political ideas are based in humanity. I don't know what that means entirely but it feels once more like everything that is meant to be in here gets placed out there, where we all have to then take sides. If we vote left or vote right, we are not then allowed to constructively criticise the side we are on because then we are being unfaithful to that side.
And how bloody childish is that?
You can put in place as many programs as you want. But real change only ever comes from within the heart, between people, not externally, handed down from an expert or an institutional authority, no matter how good or well-intentioned it is.
Domestic violence happens because men are at their wits end, because they do not know how to communicate, because the way we live totally fucks us up, because they are big babies, because there is not the right kind of support that comes from people you know instead of some psychologist across the other side of the desk, because 40 million other reasons.
Nothing will ever change unless something changes in us, unless people can see within themselves reasons to change. Programs run by the police are not the answer. Great social ties are the answer. The more programs there are run by the police, the more people believe that the answer must lie "out there" with the "experts" and not "in here" with me and the people I know coming to grips with ourselves.
I've been thinking lately about where I stand politically. I left lean and I vote left, but I am really right wing in my ideas about a limited form of government. But then it struck me the other day - my political ideas are not based in the political system. My political ideas are based in humanity. I don't know what that means entirely but it feels once more like everything that is meant to be in here gets placed out there, where we all have to then take sides. If we vote left or vote right, we are not then allowed to constructively criticise the side we are on because then we are being unfaithful to that side.
And how bloody childish is that?
No, this isn't a post about Sting, Stewart and Andy. I've already done one of those.
I was just lying on the couch watching TV and an ad for the Transport Accident Commission came on. You'll be surprised to know that these ads are giving me the shits. I might vote to the left, but I'm all for limiting government when required. The TAC is an organisation of the state government, which administers "treatment and benefits for people injured in transport accidents", paid by each motorist as part of our registration. The TAC also promotes road safety and improves our trauma system. Which is all fine and necessary. Since it's inception in 1986, the road toll has had a pretty steep nosedive. Right around the time people started getting fearmongered to within an inch of our lives about bloody everything.
How far should government intervention extend? Where does human responsibility come in? How do you factor into a government worldview that bows down and kisses the bum of the economy and bottom lines and growth and materialism, the fact that bad shit happens in life, that accidents happen, and that red-taping everything has just gone too far? I understand the TAC's necessity, but I wonder at the propensity for systems and governments and organisations to extend their arms of influence unless held in check.
The TV ad warns motorists who misbehave that they will be caught by Victoria Police because, says the voiceover cop, having to go to people's houses to tell them that a beloved relative will not be home for Christmas is one of the worst things to have to do as a policeman. Well, I'm sure it is. But it's your job. I'm sure having to clear people's blocked drains stuffed full of poo and used tampons would be a pain in the bum for plumbers. Should we produce an ad for tens of thousands of dollars for that as well? Maybe we could install CCTV into everyone's toilets so no one is misbehaving. Meanwhile entire countries starve to death, while we waste money on mounds of bureaucracy.
Seriously, when did we become such a big load of babies? Why do we allow ourselves to continue to be dictated to like a bunch of enormous children? Seriously, if you watch footage of anything before the 1980's, you can't help but look at people and think, "My God, look at all the things they're getting up to. Oooh, look at that occupational health and safety rule being broken. Ooh, look at those people getting to do those things without getting fined." Why do we have to be so overgoverned when really, the majority of the population at any one time is pretty well-behaved? Where do people get to let loose? Go get pissed in the city and get into a fight, and you'll have the cops come down on you in their giant hummers before you can yell "capsicum spray". What are we scared of? Is it the simmering underneath our consciences of violence that we can sense? Because surely we are all a violent people. And a cowardly people too. Despite all of our rules and fearmongering, you can see it coming out sideways. Case in point, a 72-year-old man being knocked to the ground and kicked after he went to the aide of a woman being bashed the other day.
Humans are scary. We're not all that far from violence spilling over at any one time. Hence all the rules. Rules are easy to enforce in a people who don't value their freedom very much but would prefer to be peaceful and safe. Better to enforce an extra ton of rules every year so that we can feel safe. Rules never saved no one. Enforcing rules against each other to protect each other from each other does not create a safer society, but a less safe society.
I complain about this advert because on Victorian roads over the past year, 303 people died. Which is crap, you know? But 303 people out of more than 3 million drivers who die in a year when we are driving big fast machines that would scare the shit out of someone plopped down in a time machine from 1730 is really actually pretty good. But you can't have ads encouraging the good, can you? This little baby doesn't run like that.
Because I couldn't envisage the TAC running a positive ad. Imagine. One that encourages the vast majority of people who are driving big fast killing machines but nevertheless manage to get through an entire driving life without karking it. That would be cool, wouldn't it? But no. You just couldn't do that. That would encourage people, wouldn't it? Madge who lives down the road and drives a couple of times a week would get heady from the encouragement and throw caution to the wind, go sick doing 200 in a 60 zone on her way to the shops.
We're just not allowed to be responsible for our own stuff, are we? Because we're too pathetic. We're encouraged to be pathetic little professional victims in a namby pamby society, so we need to be fed our responsibilities like little children. I'm so tired and bored with it all. We are fearmongered from every single direction, made to feel bad about situations that are actually pretty positive overall. What a ridiculous, crazy, crazy, crazy system this is.
Let's start a new one :)
(Goodness, I sound like I should be writing for the Herald Sun :)
I was just lying on the couch watching TV and an ad for the Transport Accident Commission came on. You'll be surprised to know that these ads are giving me the shits. I might vote to the left, but I'm all for limiting government when required. The TAC is an organisation of the state government, which administers "treatment and benefits for people injured in transport accidents", paid by each motorist as part of our registration. The TAC also promotes road safety and improves our trauma system. Which is all fine and necessary. Since it's inception in 1986, the road toll has had a pretty steep nosedive. Right around the time people started getting fearmongered to within an inch of our lives about bloody everything.
How far should government intervention extend? Where does human responsibility come in? How do you factor into a government worldview that bows down and kisses the bum of the economy and bottom lines and growth and materialism, the fact that bad shit happens in life, that accidents happen, and that red-taping everything has just gone too far? I understand the TAC's necessity, but I wonder at the propensity for systems and governments and organisations to extend their arms of influence unless held in check.
The TV ad warns motorists who misbehave that they will be caught by Victoria Police because, says the voiceover cop, having to go to people's houses to tell them that a beloved relative will not be home for Christmas is one of the worst things to have to do as a policeman. Well, I'm sure it is. But it's your job. I'm sure having to clear people's blocked drains stuffed full of poo and used tampons would be a pain in the bum for plumbers. Should we produce an ad for tens of thousands of dollars for that as well? Maybe we could install CCTV into everyone's toilets so no one is misbehaving. Meanwhile entire countries starve to death, while we waste money on mounds of bureaucracy.
Seriously, when did we become such a big load of babies? Why do we allow ourselves to continue to be dictated to like a bunch of enormous children? Seriously, if you watch footage of anything before the 1980's, you can't help but look at people and think, "My God, look at all the things they're getting up to. Oooh, look at that occupational health and safety rule being broken. Ooh, look at those people getting to do those things without getting fined." Why do we have to be so overgoverned when really, the majority of the population at any one time is pretty well-behaved? Where do people get to let loose? Go get pissed in the city and get into a fight, and you'll have the cops come down on you in their giant hummers before you can yell "capsicum spray". What are we scared of? Is it the simmering underneath our consciences of violence that we can sense? Because surely we are all a violent people. And a cowardly people too. Despite all of our rules and fearmongering, you can see it coming out sideways. Case in point, a 72-year-old man being knocked to the ground and kicked after he went to the aide of a woman being bashed the other day.
Humans are scary. We're not all that far from violence spilling over at any one time. Hence all the rules. Rules are easy to enforce in a people who don't value their freedom very much but would prefer to be peaceful and safe. Better to enforce an extra ton of rules every year so that we can feel safe. Rules never saved no one. Enforcing rules against each other to protect each other from each other does not create a safer society, but a less safe society.
I complain about this advert because on Victorian roads over the past year, 303 people died. Which is crap, you know? But 303 people out of more than 3 million drivers who die in a year when we are driving big fast machines that would scare the shit out of someone plopped down in a time machine from 1730 is really actually pretty good. But you can't have ads encouraging the good, can you? This little baby doesn't run like that.
Because I couldn't envisage the TAC running a positive ad. Imagine. One that encourages the vast majority of people who are driving big fast killing machines but nevertheless manage to get through an entire driving life without karking it. That would be cool, wouldn't it? But no. You just couldn't do that. That would encourage people, wouldn't it? Madge who lives down the road and drives a couple of times a week would get heady from the encouragement and throw caution to the wind, go sick doing 200 in a 60 zone on her way to the shops.
We're just not allowed to be responsible for our own stuff, are we? Because we're too pathetic. We're encouraged to be pathetic little professional victims in a namby pamby society, so we need to be fed our responsibilities like little children. I'm so tired and bored with it all. We are fearmongered from every single direction, made to feel bad about situations that are actually pretty positive overall. What a ridiculous, crazy, crazy, crazy system this is.
Let's start a new one :)
(Goodness, I sound like I should be writing for the Herald Sun :)
Back in 2005, it was discovered that Cornelia Rau, a permanent resident of Australia, was unlawfully interred in the Baxter detention centre. Her story was splashed all over the papers at the time. It is a rather long story of how she came to be unlawfully detained at Baxter - you can read about it here - and not one that can be blamed on the system.
What can be blamed on the system is the way that she was treated upon her release. When it was discovered that Rau was at Baxter unlawfully, the story made big media news. She was transferred at night to a hospital in Port Augusta for committal under the Mental Health Act. Tonight I saw footage of her transferral. Footage of the one female and four male guards who entered her room while she was having a shower. The female guard opened the bathroom door and informed her that she was required to leave. Rau wanted to know why, but she wasn't told. Not then, and not when she was basically dragged out of the bathroom to a waiting gurney outside her room wearing just a pair of underpants. From there she was strapped down almost naked, covered by a blanket, and taken out of Baxter. The entire time nobody gave her an answer as to what was going on with her.
Baxter and Woomera detention centres were both privately run detention centres where inmates conducted the largest riot ever seen in Australia's detention facility history. They sewed their lips together in protest, went on hunger strikes, tried to hang themselves. Poorly trained and inappropriately selected guards entered into a hellish environment where the groupspeak held that detainees were to be referred to as unlawful non citizens. An environment where the batons guards used were referred to as 'black Panadol', references made to to 'gas and bash' approaches of dealing with people who were often already traumatised before they reached these shores and fell into piles of governmental red tape that took years to processing their claims. In the meantime, they were treated like prisoners. And the guards themselves were traumatised. Some guards tried to take their own lives afterwards. Many remain deeply scarred.
One guard was employed when she was a 20 year old woman with three children who had just come out of a violent relationship and had mental health issues of her own. She had a bowl of hot curry thrown into her face by an unlawful non-citizen. She required an operation to insert plastic tubes into her eyes to function as tear ducts, as the ones that came with her eyes were now ruined.
Urbanmonk described the results of the Australian government's decision to privatise its detention centre facilities to a for profit company:
(However, Rau was later paid compensation by the government to the tune of $2.6 million. Which is more than the unlawful non citizens will ever see. And which is no justice at all. But I don't think the system speaks in language of justice, just the monetary language of compensation.
Greater vision yields the following, however:
What can be blamed on the system is the way that she was treated upon her release. When it was discovered that Rau was at Baxter unlawfully, the story made big media news. She was transferred at night to a hospital in Port Augusta for committal under the Mental Health Act. Tonight I saw footage of her transferral. Footage of the one female and four male guards who entered her room while she was having a shower. The female guard opened the bathroom door and informed her that she was required to leave. Rau wanted to know why, but she wasn't told. Not then, and not when she was basically dragged out of the bathroom to a waiting gurney outside her room wearing just a pair of underpants. From there she was strapped down almost naked, covered by a blanket, and taken out of Baxter. The entire time nobody gave her an answer as to what was going on with her.
Baxter and Woomera detention centres were both privately run detention centres where inmates conducted the largest riot ever seen in Australia's detention facility history. They sewed their lips together in protest, went on hunger strikes, tried to hang themselves. Poorly trained and inappropriately selected guards entered into a hellish environment where the groupspeak held that detainees were to be referred to as unlawful non citizens. An environment where the batons guards used were referred to as 'black Panadol', references made to to 'gas and bash' approaches of dealing with people who were often already traumatised before they reached these shores and fell into piles of governmental red tape that took years to processing their claims. In the meantime, they were treated like prisoners. And the guards themselves were traumatised. Some guards tried to take their own lives afterwards. Many remain deeply scarred.
One guard was employed when she was a 20 year old woman with three children who had just come out of a violent relationship and had mental health issues of her own. She had a bowl of hot curry thrown into her face by an unlawful non-citizen. She required an operation to insert plastic tubes into her eyes to function as tear ducts, as the ones that came with her eyes were now ruined.
Urbanmonk described the results of the Australian government's decision to privatise its detention centre facilities to a for profit company:
There in lies the great beauty of the for profit organization. Divorced from ethical relationship to people, it mutates into a free wheeling force of violence that only serves one god. And in the service of that impersonal god, ordinary people, the beloved of God, are ripped to shreds and left as trembling shadows in its wake.God help all of those people. God help all of us when rationalising, sequestering, and refusing to take responisibility is an integral part of the system we live in. No one is to blame anymore it seems.
(However, Rau was later paid compensation by the government to the tune of $2.6 million. Which is more than the unlawful non citizens will ever see. And which is no justice at all. But I don't think the system speaks in language of justice, just the monetary language of compensation.
Greater vision yields the following, however:
I think authentic God experience gives you another place to stand, another identity, and the courage to stand outside of the world.
Authentic God experience liberates you from the domination system, liberates you from needing everything to be perfect or right, and liberates you to be who you really are—naked and poor.
And until you can stand in what Jesus called the kingdom of God, a different kingdom, you will almost always be completely subservient to the world.
Richard Rohr
Dear Victoria Police
Thank you for having such handsome young policemen man your booze bus late last night on Ballarat Road. A booze bus on a Monday night? That seems a bit strange to me, I must say, but hey, you gotta do what you believe you gotta do. I thank you that you make it attractive to my eyes in the process.
No, that's not why I'm writing. I see you apprehended Olive doing 67 k's in a 60 zone on Sunshine Road, West Footscray, thus breaking road rule 20 of the Road Rules Victoria Act. Dammit, it's so hard to concentrate on keeping the car at the right speed. I could almost miss looking at the road, spending so much time looking at the speedo.
Anyways, I am writing to inform you that I think your fine of $138 is a bit - well, it's a bit excessive, don't you think? Yes, I know, I know - you want to deter my behaviour. I understand that as a government department that writhes around in red tape and bureaucracy that you just don't know any other way of doing it than the punishment and deterring way. Perhaps there is no other way. Perhaps there is. But I'm not so sure a government department would have enough gumption to enact proactive, life-giving ways of doing things even if those things did manage to make it past the 37 meetings required to institute new proceedings without being chopped up on the floor by the 7th meeting. But I digresseth.
Anyways, I've been thinking. I understand the need for people to do the speed limit. I really do. And I understand your need to instil fear as some sort of deterrent to said behaviour. But you see, the thing is, people can't get around in fear of what might happen - not all the time, not even in this fearful society, where apparently free people with lots of money are constantly encouraged, by their hearts and externally, to be scared of so many things, most of which will never even happen. Sometimes I think your approach is counterproductive to the very people you're targeting to try to get your citizenry to conform to what you want them to do by showing them graphic advertisements at quarter time in the footy about people who have done 7 ks over the speed limit and lived to tell the sorry tale of the people they killed. Or more often, of the damage they have done to themselves. But your methods bring out my childish, inner anti-authoritarian, it must be said. The one that says, "Hey, you know what? People drive fast because they can. Maybe they should manufacture cars that don't go over a certain limit. And hey, you know something else? People drive fast because it's fucking fun. Yes, it is perhaps irresponsible driving fast, when you factor in all the possible bad, scary, awful things that could happen. But that kind of dictum would mean that we should just all stay in bed (alone, because think of the risk of sexually transmitted diseases) because ooh, bad, scary, awful things happen all the time, and in actual fact I would say that the way our society lives here is so mind numingly safe that sometimes it makes me want to drive really fast just to give it some sort of colour to a world that thinks it can legislate the danger out and still have any kind of a life.
I digress again. It's hard to keep focussed this morning. Anyway, the main reason I'm writing is to suggest that perhaps there are other ways of penalising my errant driving than fiscal. Yes, yes, I know, it's difficult to see that in a world that worships money as its god. We love worshipping money. It gets us to wield all our power-loving and fear-mongering with license. We love it that way. But hey, I was thinking - instead of charging me 138 bucks, wouldn't it be nice if there could be some other way of paying back my penalty to society? Like, for example, voluntary community service for a week or two. I'm happy to pay my dues, you know? But maybe if you got me doing a bit of community service at, for example, the TAC, where I could help the people who have come a cropper doing 7 ks over the speed limit, perhaps that might be a bit more of a proactive way to come at things, dontchathink?
Or community service planting some trees. Or hanging with some old people. Just a thought.
Thank you for having such handsome young policemen man your booze bus late last night on Ballarat Road. A booze bus on a Monday night? That seems a bit strange to me, I must say, but hey, you gotta do what you believe you gotta do. I thank you that you make it attractive to my eyes in the process.
No, that's not why I'm writing. I see you apprehended Olive doing 67 k's in a 60 zone on Sunshine Road, West Footscray, thus breaking road rule 20 of the Road Rules Victoria Act. Dammit, it's so hard to concentrate on keeping the car at the right speed. I could almost miss looking at the road, spending so much time looking at the speedo.
Anyways, I am writing to inform you that I think your fine of $138 is a bit - well, it's a bit excessive, don't you think? Yes, I know, I know - you want to deter my behaviour. I understand that as a government department that writhes around in red tape and bureaucracy that you just don't know any other way of doing it than the punishment and deterring way. Perhaps there is no other way. Perhaps there is. But I'm not so sure a government department would have enough gumption to enact proactive, life-giving ways of doing things even if those things did manage to make it past the 37 meetings required to institute new proceedings without being chopped up on the floor by the 7th meeting. But I digresseth.
Anyways, I've been thinking. I understand the need for people to do the speed limit. I really do. And I understand your need to instil fear as some sort of deterrent to said behaviour. But you see, the thing is, people can't get around in fear of what might happen - not all the time, not even in this fearful society, where apparently free people with lots of money are constantly encouraged, by their hearts and externally, to be scared of so many things, most of which will never even happen. Sometimes I think your approach is counterproductive to the very people you're targeting to try to get your citizenry to conform to what you want them to do by showing them graphic advertisements at quarter time in the footy about people who have done 7 ks over the speed limit and lived to tell the sorry tale of the people they killed. Or more often, of the damage they have done to themselves. But your methods bring out my childish, inner anti-authoritarian, it must be said. The one that says, "Hey, you know what? People drive fast because they can. Maybe they should manufacture cars that don't go over a certain limit. And hey, you know something else? People drive fast because it's fucking fun. Yes, it is perhaps irresponsible driving fast, when you factor in all the possible bad, scary, awful things that could happen. But that kind of dictum would mean that we should just all stay in bed (alone, because think of the risk of sexually transmitted diseases) because ooh, bad, scary, awful things happen all the time, and in actual fact I would say that the way our society lives here is so mind numingly safe that sometimes it makes me want to drive really fast just to give it some sort of colour to a world that thinks it can legislate the danger out and still have any kind of a life.
I digress again. It's hard to keep focussed this morning. Anyway, the main reason I'm writing is to suggest that perhaps there are other ways of penalising my errant driving than fiscal. Yes, yes, I know, it's difficult to see that in a world that worships money as its god. We love worshipping money. It gets us to wield all our power-loving and fear-mongering with license. We love it that way. But hey, I was thinking - instead of charging me 138 bucks, wouldn't it be nice if there could be some other way of paying back my penalty to society? Like, for example, voluntary community service for a week or two. I'm happy to pay my dues, you know? But maybe if you got me doing a bit of community service at, for example, the TAC, where I could help the people who have come a cropper doing 7 ks over the speed limit, perhaps that might be a bit more of a proactive way to come at things, dontchathink?
Or community service planting some trees. Or hanging with some old people. Just a thought.
The Australian Federal government is trying to address teenage binge drinking by proposing a tax hike for premixed alcoholic beverages like vodka and orange and bourbon and coke (two personal favourites in my teenage years, when I had the dosh).
The government believes that making these drinks more expensive will stop teenagers getting together and getting shitfaced. I wonder, do any of them really believe this, even a smidge? I know we are all economically rationalised to death and feel constrained onto spreadsheet columns, but does anyone at all involved with the government, including the toilet cleaners, really think that is anything but some sort of lip service? Surely not. And surely they don't think we're that stupid. And surely this is why listening to the blatherings of the world is so damn tiresome. It's enough to make you want to go and get shitfaced :)
This kind of thing really pisses me off. What a waste of time it all is. It's talking about issues without talking about issues. So much fluff, full of soundbytes and infuriatingly signifying nothing.
Teenagers get drunk because it feels really good to be pissed. Because they are full of angst and don't know who the hell they are and are suffering under the weight of living in a world where nothing gets discussed in ways that really make any kind of goddamned difference at all and because no one would listen if they said that Uncle Harry was doing bad stuff to them when no one was looking, or that they felt like losers because they didn't know what they wanted to do for the rest of their lives and therefore which VCE stream to set themselves onto at 15 years of age. Or that they felt like they would never ever belong and it didn't seem like there was all that much to belong to anyway and hey, how bad does that make you feel when we are the lucky ones and the rest of the world is being flung about by tempestuous weather?
Teenagers get pissed because it is so nice to quell your fears and shame - and that is surely the absolute crux of it, for mine. Or at least, that was always the reason why I got drunk. To get me out of myself. To have a blast. To tell my friends I loved them (love ya mate, I'll luv ya forever, mate. Now excuse me while I go over here and vomit). To give me a bit of Dutch courage to talk to that boy and maybe get a pash (or more). Fear and shame pursue every single person down through the days and to not address that is to not address anything in the end.
But then, what column would that fit into on the spreadsheet? And is that the responsibility of the government anyway?
Taxing alcopops will make teenagers resort to drinking beer, or they will buy wine and mix their own orange juice in it. Or whatever. Or maybe - heaven forbid - they will buy Blackberry Nip or Brandivino and mix it with Coke. However far your dosh spreads. 'Cause it's not about the taste so much as it's about the high and about the quell. And I really just don't know how that one can be regulated. 'Cause you can stuff it down and keep on going, but so far I have really only found one Place where fear and shame have been nailed. And it's got nothing to do with regulation and everything to do with Love.
The government believes that making these drinks more expensive will stop teenagers getting together and getting shitfaced. I wonder, do any of them really believe this, even a smidge? I know we are all economically rationalised to death and feel constrained onto spreadsheet columns, but does anyone at all involved with the government, including the toilet cleaners, really think that is anything but some sort of lip service? Surely not. And surely they don't think we're that stupid. And surely this is why listening to the blatherings of the world is so damn tiresome. It's enough to make you want to go and get shitfaced :)
This kind of thing really pisses me off. What a waste of time it all is. It's talking about issues without talking about issues. So much fluff, full of soundbytes and infuriatingly signifying nothing.
Teenagers get drunk because it feels really good to be pissed. Because they are full of angst and don't know who the hell they are and are suffering under the weight of living in a world where nothing gets discussed in ways that really make any kind of goddamned difference at all and because no one would listen if they said that Uncle Harry was doing bad stuff to them when no one was looking, or that they felt like losers because they didn't know what they wanted to do for the rest of their lives and therefore which VCE stream to set themselves onto at 15 years of age. Or that they felt like they would never ever belong and it didn't seem like there was all that much to belong to anyway and hey, how bad does that make you feel when we are the lucky ones and the rest of the world is being flung about by tempestuous weather?
Teenagers get pissed because it is so nice to quell your fears and shame - and that is surely the absolute crux of it, for mine. Or at least, that was always the reason why I got drunk. To get me out of myself. To have a blast. To tell my friends I loved them (love ya mate, I'll luv ya forever, mate. Now excuse me while I go over here and vomit). To give me a bit of Dutch courage to talk to that boy and maybe get a pash (or more). Fear and shame pursue every single person down through the days and to not address that is to not address anything in the end.
But then, what column would that fit into on the spreadsheet? And is that the responsibility of the government anyway?
Taxing alcopops will make teenagers resort to drinking beer, or they will buy wine and mix their own orange juice in it. Or whatever. Or maybe - heaven forbid - they will buy Blackberry Nip or Brandivino and mix it with Coke. However far your dosh spreads. 'Cause it's not about the taste so much as it's about the high and about the quell. And I really just don't know how that one can be regulated. 'Cause you can stuff it down and keep on going, but so far I have really only found one Place where fear and shame have been nailed. And it's got nothing to do with regulation and everything to do with Love.
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