Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
Seriously, the only thing a Fairfax broadsheet from thirty years ago and from today have in common is their logo and Ross Gittins.
the headlines are dominated by lifestyle (relationships), housing and television show recap stories.
Fuck, what am I saying. For all I know U2 owe Outbrain a private concert for some horrific favour or other.
On a more prosaic note, man am I done with this winter. Yes, winter. Now, don't mistake me, weather is not climate and I know that full well, but anyhow, here in Toowoomba, at the end of September, hardly a day has yet topped 20 degrees. It's 19 right now. It's nearly October and I'm still cold all the time.
Bloody hell you Queenslanders. If it were that warm I'd be complaining endlessly. I'm annoyed it's now getting warm enough that we rarely have days below 14-15. On the other hand, I'm glad it's not now 1-2 degrees when I go for my morning run.
On the political topics:
- What I find interesting is the divergent trajectories of the Middle East and Latin America despite the US pursuing similar goals during the Cold War in dismantling left-wing/progressive forces that were feared to favour the Soviets (or just wouldn't play ball on the US's terms). I don't know nearly as much about Latin America as I should, so I can't speculate on why the results today are so different, but I think it's worth noting. And perhaps New Zealand should consider itself lucky that the US didn't try to intervene during the first year of the Lange government!
- It's genuinely scary that Trump makes us think Dubya wasn't that bad, or that Abbott does the same to Howard, or whatever. I have an older colleague who is furious that Malcolm Fraser in the years preceding his death was somewhat adopted by the left - I've lost count of how many times I've heard from her some variation of "I was an undergrad when he came to power! He was terrible!" It goes to show just how alarmingly there has been a drift to the right and how much the goalposts have shifted in terms of what is an acceptable part of mainstream political debate.
Heh, well, it's usually in the high twenties at this time of year. The high twenties is my comfort zone. Over 30 and I feel too hot, under 23 or so and I feel cold.
The Middle East and Latin America were very different in so many ways, but I take your point that there are some parallels.
Maybe Australia should consider itself lucky that the US didn't try to intervene during the Whitlam Govermn- oh, wait...
Yeah, time has a way of smoothing off those rough edges, doesn't it. I was around for the early Howard government, and so much of what was done is done for good, irreversible, the damage immense. The privatisation of the employment-agency-biz springs to mind (the Job Network, which is essentially a cuddlier cousin of the prison-industrial complex).
It's too hot if I can't wear a coat or jacket, and at the moment I consider that to be about 20. When I lived in Queensland my upper limit was 25. I live in my coats. I don't even know what to do if I don't have one and all of its sweet, sweet pockets in which to store my life.I work at home and spend most of my time there to be honest, and if I have to wear a coat, it's too cold. In fact, if I have to wear a shirt, it's by definition, too cold.
True. Although the policy objectives were analogous, the local contexts are perhaps too difficult to compare. Though many of the left-wing revolutionaries in both regions shared bonds.
It's odd because it's not as if the Whitlam government was that radical. Certainly not compared to what was happening elsewhere, or even to Chifley's government.
Oh I know, and in some respects, with the first big tariff reductions, Whitlam's government could be seen as a forerunner of what would come under Hawke. Actually Australia under Whitlam was mostly just picking up where the US had been going under Johnson or maybe the UK under Wilson, but it was the seventies by then and then the oil crises started rolling on in.
In all seriousness I don't know if US contacts in the diplomatic arena were actually desperate to destroy Whitlam, but they were seemingly unsettled enough by the erratic nature of that government to prefer Fraser and the Coalition...
I wrote some overviews of research projects going on in my faculty last year and one of them was to do with the privatisation of employment agencies. It's not something I had thought about much - it happened before I was old enough to grasp the import of what was happening - and I certainly had not realised that Australia took the most extreme approach of comparable countries. Both the UK and the Netherlands maintain much greater state involvement in the sector than we do, and provide better incentives not just to jobseekers, but also to staff to maintain morale and reduce turnover. My overviews were based on interviews, and I walked into this one expecting to be bored stiff and walked out having really learnt something.
Yeah, it's odd that Australia went so far in that direction, and bear in mind this was during Howard's unhappy first term when he was an inch away from defeat. As I've said before, Howard wasn't really safe in power until after 9/11 and the Tampa business.
The dark? What is this dark in SA? Is the Death Star in orbit?