From the Salon des ABC refuses.

The good news just keeps on coming. First there appeared on the news yesterday an item on finally considering a ‘fat tax’ and this morning by no less than the President of the United States, Mr Barack Obama, the support for same sex marriage.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-10/obama-backs-same-sex-marriage/4001992

It is only a matter of time before some kind of disincentive for junk food will be introduced in Australia. The rumblings by health experts on the costs of obesity far outweighing the benefits of profits by the junk food corporations will finally have to be acknowledged. Why is it that so many bad things are allowed to continue? It seems that nothing must stand in the way of ‘freedom of choice’, even if it is killing us.

A few months ago the proposed legislation to limit gambling on poker machines was so watered down it became useless. Once again, the shouting supporters of ‘free choice’ were the loudest and concerns for the tens of thousands of families’ lives continuing to be ruined, were side-lined. One of the most depressing sights would have to be a stroll through those poker machine dens in clubs. There they all are, at 10am, queuing up outside the clubs, including many of the overweight and in total silence desperately feeding money into a clanging and blinking machine. The answer by the club industry,” it supports many of our youth sporting clubs and without the revenue from those poker machines we would also not be able to supply entertainment and cheap meals to our members, many of whom are retired pensioners”

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That’s just so great, isn’t it? We support the good by first allowing and encouraging something bad! In any case, if those sporting youth clubs are so good, why are our young increasingly suffering from being overweight and becoming victims of diabetes? Does revenue from gambling and eating junk food go hand in hand?  Yes, it does. Both are the extreme sides of allowing unfettered ‘freedom of choice’. How come though that in some countries they do act on obesity and excessive gambling? Denmark and the UK are some of the countries having introduced a brake on the consumption of fat by increasing the price of fat. Excessive gambling and availability of gambling venues have also been clamped down in many countries.

Any government worth its salt ought to consider the good for society, even if at times, it means restricting this silly  ‘choice’ above all mantra. It took years to get cigarettes on the undesirable social benefits list, even though it meant restricting the societal exercise in the holy cow of ‘choice’.

Why not put gambling and unhealthy foods on the same list as smoking. Restrict the number of poker machines with maximum 10 cent limits and decrease the cost or subsidize good foods. Put a good solid fat tax in place. Increase revenue and slim the population. A win, win for all. Make carrots and cabbage machines freely available at clubs and sporting venues. Replace coke machines at our hospitals, schools, center link offices and police clubs with plain natural water or freshly squeezed fruit juice dispensers.

The freedom of choice has also reached a ridiculous level in our media. It doesn’t seem to matter how people are being demolished, attacked, denigrated, insulted or slandered; nothing must stand in the way of freedom of expression. It’s freedom, in at least the UK,  included the invasion of privacy by journalists happily hacking away into people’s private lives.

The single most outstanding exclusion in all this lovely freedom in Australia is its obstinate stance against same sex marriage. By hook and by crook (more crook) its opposition to same sex granting of a marriage certificate seems to be an almost impossible obstacle to overcome. How odd, that a simple ‘freedom of this choice’ is so difficult to allow. What is it? How come that when it comes to equality involving a union of two people that might or might not include sexual union as well, seems to remain a barrier when it comes to marrying. We allow relations between same sex people but it is the recognition into a registered marriage that seems to remain a puzzling and seemingly unsolvable conundrum for our unmarried Prime minister to accept…

Anyone for a cabbage? Your shout.

Share Mother’s Day with us at Bunnings. (Bring the kids)

It’s hard to believe, but that’s what the blinking sign said. We came home late from Sydney and drove past that sign at Mittagong. ‘Barbeque and jumping castle will be there’, was added for good measure. It just never stops, does it? The barbeque, of course, was meant to entice the forever hungry male partner, the jumping castle for the kids. Nothing was left to chance. It had all been worked out after weeks of doing surveys and conducting polls.

Grey’s advertising team had been working on this campaign (feverishly) and with a $600.000 budget was expected to come up with the goods. The ‘goods’ being a gross return of at least $20.million for that single day of the year spread around Sydney’s suburban stores. There was a palpable buzz of excitement around head office in the days leading up to the big event. Office boys were recklessly flirting with the typists and a team leader had even been so brash as to put his hand on the shoulder of the manager in charge of bolt-cutters and wrenches divisions. This time, she allowed his hand to remain…- Bolt cutters and wrenches are big ticket items for Bunnings, hugely profitable, and at least as big as bananas are for Woolworth. – She was hoping for a bonus and thus allowed his hand to linger longer than she would normally tolerate.

I can never think of wrenches and not come to a smile. Every time we catch the train to Sydney we go past my old stamping ground of Revesby. Not that there ever was a huge ‘stamping’ going on at Revesby in the late fifties, unless of course you consider crawling over a lawn and picking at the grass or staring at petunia beds from behind the venetians enormously  riveting.

However, Revesby is well known for its Workers Club. Many famous artists have performed there including The Bee Gees and Diana Ross. Even today some of the best gigs sooner or later appear at Revesby’s Workers club.  The reason for my mirth when the train passes Revesby is its large cement and white painted emblem at the front of this huge building, high up the façade, facing the railway. It has a hammer and a wrench crossed over. I can just imagine the numerous meetings held by Revesby’s Workers club management, trying to iron out how to put a recognizable face to the club. Clearly the word ‘Workers Club’ indicated an affiliation with ‘workers’, but, at the same time, there must have been some in management hesitant to use the ‘hammer and sickle’ emblem. The symbolism of that emblem could too clearly and too soon be perceived as a possible reversal to communism.  The club certainly did not want to miss out on the thousands of Eastern European migrants having arrived here as a result of the ‘hammer and sickle’. After many meetings and heated arguments a good compromise must have been reached, hence, the crossed over ‘Hammer and (plumbers) Wrench’. A good compromise, don’t you think? One foot in capitalism and yet, still a small lingering and hunkering of that other ‘social’ world.

Have a happy Mother’s Day. (Think of buying mum a rubber plunger to unblock the drain)

Delights of King’s ex-Army Disposals.

There was nothing more encouraging for going bush than taking the train to Sydney’s Central and walk along Broadway towards Town-Hall. On a corner at George Street there was for many years a shop named King’s Disposals. It was advertised as an ex-army store selling used ex soldiers equipment but I was never so sure of that. They never sold guns or disused cannons or tanks. If you wanted a gun you had to walk on a few hundred meters towards the Town-Hall.  The gun shop was next to Pellegrini religious goods and gifts which I thought a rather strange combination of shops right next to each other. Although, history does tell us that one doesn’t preclude or exclude the other. In fact, often God and guns have been the best of buddies.

I bought my first gun in that shop next to the religious shop. It was a B.S.A 22mm rifle with a nicely polished wooden handle. It was graced with a sliding bolt action and five bullet cartridge. I remember buying it all wrapped up and then peering into the Pellegrini shop next door. The window was full of virtuous and holy looking virgins with many variations of Christ keeping an eye out for order…it must have been a difficult task with a wreath of thorns embedded into your head. Compared with the gun shop it all looked very unrealistic and somewhat silly, especially considering its situation. If ever there was a conflict of interest it was surely manifested there in George Street.

From memory there were also a few barber shops and perhaps a milk-bar called Stavros or maybe Mavros. Sooner or later your walk would then have taken you to the Trocadero Dance Hall where many of those Southern European migrants would be given their first of many refusals for a simple fox-trot. Later in the evening, many of those dark eyed lonely men would look for solace with East Sydney’s Chapel Street whores and go for a two-quid ‘short-time.’ No refusals  and there would be a busy and brisk trade in a different kind of fox-trot,  especially when the bus loads of Queensland cane cutters arrived. Pellegrini was fighting an uphill battle keeping those young men virtuous and from straying. Those brothels in Chapel Street now cost millions with many including ‘long time’ mortgages.

Going back to Kings Disposals there was a Chinese restaurant called the Tai-ping just around the corner. It was upstairs and specialized in Mongolian Lamb. I would sometimes be able to afford going there for a lunch before ending up at the markets a bit further on. Many times my brother John and I would buy young six weeks chicks guaranteed to be laying eggs within a couple of months. They always all turned out roosters. We finally decided to buy adult chickens which we took back to Revesby on the train all with their heads poking through the hessian bag staring bewildered at the fellow passengers. They often turned out to be old boilers but still managed to squeeze out the occasional egg or two. You had to look at their combs, we were finally taught by the more experienced chook buyers. We were on a long learning curve.

King’s Disposals have all disappeared. Soon after came the Clark Rubber shops selling rubber pool liners and above ground pools, inflatable rubber mattresses and other bedding goods imported from Turkey.  Many of our friends in the Inner West bought foam- rubber seating arrangements which came in ugly modules but thought of as quite ‘hip’ at the time. Clark Rubber never had that adventurous look about them as did King’s Disposals with huge knives and those massive lace-up genuine army boots…

As for my BSA rifle, I have a photo somewhere holding up a dead snake and also still remember the garbos coarse oaths early one morning dealing with a bin full of rabbits redolent with decay and maggots.

The era of adventurous shops seems to have disappeared.

Steve Jobs and the Art of Spectacle making.

I have changed my mind about ‘Apple’. Steve Jobs was a creative genius and may his soul rest in peace. I watched a program about Steve’s life on TV last night and it just blew me over.

If ever there was proof of ageing stultifying opinions, my previous haughty disdain for any gadget with little buttons, was in the pudding. The proof of the pudding is that very often, people with advancing years resist the jigging about of the younger ones and fresh ideas. It must be a form of dormant jealousy that pops up when it starts to dawn on us, that that’s it, the fag end of life is nigh. There is little I can do about it now except repent and try and improve, become tolerant of little buttons and their pushers. Perhaps take up dancing lessons or knitting.

Years ago, on the train chockers with passengers I once stood up for a woman who looked a bit pale and tired. I was perhaps seventeen and working for Spectacle Makers and Co, a company in Clarence Street. My job was to grind lenses to their prescribed specification. A horribly dirty job that included splashing slurry of water and fine grinding powder on the future lenses of chunks of glass that were fastened on a metal rotating chock with the use of hot tar. It was then a world of concave and convex measurements with strange and exotic workers initiating ceremonies involving blue ultramarine dye rubbed around the novice apprentices’ private parts.

When I stood up, gallantly offering my seat, I was astonished by the reply,’ do I look that bad, she said?’ I mumbled something like’ no-sorry, you look OK’. Of course, I moved carriages and never stood up since, even if they were pregnant and close to breaking waters. The world of convex surfaces taught me a lesson and pregnant women did not break my resolve to remain seated.

Some many years later, with the Balmain local ALP Branch firmly in the hands of right wing crooks and welders of steel containers smuggling drugs and importing loose women, I queued up to renew membership. Suddenly a few large burly blokes entered the Balmain Town-Hall. One came behind me and said ‘make room for a pregnant lady, you poofter.’ I retorted, ‘you are not pregnant and you are not even a woman but could be a poofter’.

Pandemonium broke out, especially when a fire extinguisher was pulled from the wall and hurled through the upstairs window. The police, who were next door never even turned up. They were in cahoots with the punch throwing right-wing thugs. All the women at the meeting turned pale. The member books were stolen, lights switched off and we all (the bleeding left wing faction) adjourned to the local William Wallace for schooners and solace. My bleeding nose was soothed by a woman called Elisabeth, I remember it still. My pain started to wane after the fourth schooner coinciding with Bridie King’s band starting up a wild and tempestuous blues number. It shows that the world of pregnant ladies and my cruel refusal to get up for them in trains finally caught up with me.

It came back to me on the train last week, this time between Mortdale and Central Station. There I was, standing up swaying amongst all the Iphone pushers and shakers. I was hoping a young person would get up and gallantly offer an elderly gent a seat. No, not even a hint of respect, they kept bent over their world of Apps and GPS’s. “It tells me I am on the train”, someone whispered to a friend; really, wow?

Perhaps pregnancy and old age used to be neck and neck during the past when it came to standing up in public transport.

I’ll try it on crutches next time or shall I just faint and dribble a bit?

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Strange horizontal habits.

Oddly enough, in the evening there is that same reluctance but in reverse to return back to the horizontal position. It must be sheer laziness to get changed. I often wonder about the ritual of changing uniforms just in order to close eyes and have a nocturnal rest. Surely our eyes don’t depend on a change of clothes in order to sleep. The word pyjama comes from the Persian word پايجامه (Peyjama meaning “leg garment”), and was incorporated into the English language during British Raj through the Hindustani which was the progenitor language of modern-day Urdu and Hindi.

Apparently the pajama or pyjama originally was just a loose fitting garment with a draw string at the front, worn by both sexes and used during the day as well as during the night. When they speak of the ‘good old times’, I do sympathize with at least that very sensible and handy mode of dressing. Can you imagine just sauntering into your boudoir, lie down and sleep soundly, without the tediousness of undressing one mode of fashion and then dress up again into the other one? It is strange, especially considering it will be dark and no one can see you.

I have always felt a reluctance to get undressed and then dressed again just in order to go horizontal. I am only having these thoughts because of my previous few words about how so many mattresses end up on the street. There is obviously something going on in our cultures related to sleep or other activities that calls for horizontal positions. In the past everything was so much more sensible but nowadays all is geared towards consumption. We do not re-use bottles or nappies for instance. We use things once and then chuck it. Perhaps that’s how it has become with mattresses. After every move or new partner we just chuck out the old one and buy another mattress.

In those olden times and especially in cultures more sensible than ours, pajamas were often worn as comfort wear with bare feet and sometimes without underwear allowing all to be aired and swing around free range. Even more sensible was that those garments became fashionable statements and even today, especially in China, it is not unusual to see, in the afternoon and evening, entire families wearing their pajamas in public going shopping, dining out etc.

Of course, in censorious UK, the Tesco supermarket started to ban pajama clad families from shopping and a local Dublin branch of the Department of social security also banned pajamas. It was just not regarded proper attire when attending the offices of ‘social welfare’ for family assistance.

This all brings me back to one of our own social habits now steeped in distant history. It was the phenomenon of the ‘curler habits’. Do we still remember those days whereby everyone, especially women, used to wear curlers before going to bed? They were plastic rollers that hair used to be wound around and the many protrusions on those rollers made sure the hair remained tight. A plastic bag would then be placed around the head and plugged into electricity which resulted in hot air being blown around inside the bag and around the many rollers and hair.  Love making was strictly verboten while the hair was subjected to this hot air treatment and many a husband would get the message when the ‘curlers came out’. On the way to the Locomotive Work Shop, next morning, Bernie would ask Ernie; ‘did you get any last night?’ ‘No, curler night’ was the curt answer as he heaved a big sigh.

It was a bitter historical period much better forgotten

The littering of Australia seems to have gotten much worse. For a few years there was a real effort to keep our rubbish away from public areas. This was due mainly to the efforts of Ian Kiernan. Are we well on the way of turning Australian States again into giant rubbish tips?

Is there a revival of chucking things out of our cars? If not, how come our highways are so rubbish strewn?  Are we back to carefully looking into the rear mirror before we heave-ho the take away remnants of our eating and drinking habits while driving. Do we, after the last swig of the soft drink chuck the empty bottle into the Grevillia Bottle Brushes or Banksias as well?

Surprisingly, once a year, there is kind of reverse chucking of rubbish. Mum, dad and the kids, mostly on week-ends, forego the pick-nick and Sunday drive to spend the day collecting the previously chucked out rubbish. It’s a much applauded cultural event, a celebration almost on par with Australia day.

The TV News shows all those lovely kids, mums and dads going along bush tracks and beaches collecting hessian bagfuls of bottles and cans, all sorts of rubbish. We all end up going to bed feeling all is well and we are in good clean hands again.

The question that doesn’t seem to be asked is; why did we chuck that rubbish in the first place? We now all have recycling bins with regular collections.

On beautiful country sides are lonely and discarded shopping trolleys thrown over a bridge and cars driven into the river. Then of course the usual detritus of a consumer obsessed society. Many mattresses, complete floral covered settees, handy ‘night and day’ sofas with inbuilt storage are also finding their way around the shopping center’s collection bins car parks.

We have also moved into chucking the electronic litter with perfectly working but outdated TV’s, (the stigma of still watching TV’s on those large monster TV’s), a plethora of outdated computer monitors, printers and associated wonky desks all collapsed when the Allen key got lost. Go along any day when councils collect household rubbish and the streets are filled with stuff still being advertised on Bunnings and Harvey Norman. We want it NOW, the ads still screaming in our ears. Talk about a ‘throw-away-society’. We excel as no other country in rotating and chucking out all those ‘we want it NOW’ as quickly as possible.

Why are so many mattresses chucked out? Do people sleep standing up? The discarded spring mattress has clearly taken over from rusty children bikes and lawnmowers of the past. The reason being; children are becoming rare and the lawns get cut by gardeners.  Perhaps with changing and divorcing partners so often, many feel a new and fresh mattress is in order! Who knows?  It is well known that wives should get suspicious when men buy new underpants; I would be especially on the alert if partners start carting mattresses home as well.

Tony Burke, the Federal Minister for Environment is now keen to get the states to agree and approve of CDS (container deposit scheme) like they are enjoying in South Australia and Northern Territory. The school kids in those states are well provided with pocket money beavering away after school, tidying up the cities and country sides.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-28/burke-says-bottle-deposit-scheme-is-up-to-states/3978400

Another good example from the private sector is those lockable and deposit paying shopping trolleys. Why have the large supermarkets not followed suit? It should be made obligatory. Ridiculous for helicopters to be leased to try and find back shopping trolleys. There are rewards out for their return. How ridiculous and what a waste of money for those shopping trolleys to clog up our footpaths, kerbs and parks. What dysfunctional person does this? It boggles the mind what shopping trolleys are doing at Sydney’s Rookwood cemetery but there were five of those trolleys around the tombstones of some of our dearly departed last week. Did some really shopped till they dropped?

Off course the beverage industry is gearing up for the usual assault on common sense. Listening to them make you feel it is almost an obligation and virtue to confetti shower our country side with their beverage container rubbish. Who cares if the plastic rubbish ends up being ingested by pods of whales or killing dolphins?  Who cares if our country-side is littered with plastic or discarded soft drink bottles or beer cans rammed into forks of trees and broken glass bottles in our children’s playgrounds?

We might take a leaf out of societies and countries that are better in dealing with rubbish. In many countries including The Netherlands, all discarded manufactured products have to be returned to the sellers. The sellers of the products are obliged by laws to take back all those products that are being replaced. There are no rubbish tips for local residents to discard rubbish. All has to be recycled.  If you buy a TV, the old one has to be picked up by the retailer free of charge. So, it is with mattresses or bottles, jars and all plastic.

In the past, the objections to good sense and logic have been ignored and we go on our merry environmental destruction. Let’s hope that at least we succeed in getting rid of all the beverage containers littering our beautiful country.

The beverage manufacturer is surely responsible for the product and should exercise common care before as well as after the sale. Hopefully they will support Tony Burke’s move to introduce a deposit on all beverage containers.