Tag Archives: history

Twenty years a-growing

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by Education, politics • Tags: , , ,

When I left home, aged 20, circumstances didn’t allow me to take anything more than a suitcase of my clothes. My bedroom, mine since birth, was like one of those shells which crabs decorate as they carry them around. It was full of my life so far, books, drawings, train sets, sports gear, things my father had brought back from war, old school stuff. But I walked out, shed my shell, without a backward glance. I was eager for adventure, for life outside these four walls, this house, this family, eager to see what the world had in store for me. Adulthood was beckoning, imperiously, and I had to go.

Half a century on, I feel very differently of course. Want to have stern words with that young whippersnapper. It wasn’t the things so much that were important but the whole structure of family life I was leaving behind. And the psychological and emotional effects of twenty years a-growing (title of a book about an Irish childhood I’d been given). Without a backward glance, totally unaware that my much older self would look back with regret on what I was leaving behind – the comfort of familiar voices, shared history, common values, comfortable chairs, surroundings I could navigate with eyes shut. A stability which was going to be absent for quite a while as I tried to find my way bravely in a new world, where nothing was familiar. Oh, it hadn’t all been great, back home, we were a family with problems, and ups and downs like any other, but it was home, and it would take a while to find a new one.

Not unique? Of course not. We all go through this transition from youth to adult, one way and another. We all leave stuff behind. But looking around me now it seems far too many of us leave all behind. Every day there is news of bad behaviour by politicians, business leaders, unionists, sportsmen, of a kind that makes you want to have stern words, say “what would your parents think about this behaviour?”, “what would your grandparents think?”, “where did you leave the values you grew up with?”

But more than that. The country, Australia, I grew up in all those years ago, has itself changed immeasurably. The young Australia seems to have packed its bags, walked out the door of the old Australia (200 years a-growing), grabbing at a brave new world, leaving behind the baggage of fairness, equality, caring, mateship, anti-authoritarianism, mutual respect, honesty. Of course it hadn’t been perfect in the past, the treatment of women, indigenous people, migrants and the environment, were nothing to write home about. But we have lost more than we have gained. Think again, old country, look homeward.

Note – have told much of my story under “Dream” tab above. My family stuff starts about half way (say at “Leaving from Liverpool”).

Not making it any more

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by Economics, Environment • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Don’t know if you saw the recent tv program on the geological history of Australia. Some early stuff I didn’t know. For example that enormous mass of iron ore in WA was deposited when the first primitive organisms that could generate oxygen began doing so and all the iron in the seas rusted. The iron and other ores around Broken Hill generated in the deep seas which then ran through this part of the continent. Coal and gas of course laid down when the then lush tropical vegetation died and rotted and was buried far underground by sediments. All flukes really, that the deposits occur in Australia, and flukes dependent on conditions that can never be repeated from millions, even billions, of years ago. No more of that stuff being made on this planet.

On top of the land surface Australia had a rich biodiversity of abundant plant and animal life, also the result of millions of years of evolution and ecosystem development. This biodiversity sustained Aboriginal people in considerable comfort for around 50,000 years, and then provided the basis for English colonists to fell timber, graze sheep and cattle on the extensive grasslands, and grow crops where the soils were deep and organically rich. Not building diversity and rich soils any more.

There’s an old, sorta joke, which says “Want to invest in a sure thing? Buy land, they’re not making it any more”. It’s a message that should have been given to every citizen of Australia to use as a reminder that resources are limited. Instead we have behaved for two and a quarter centuries as Australia Unlimited. Big country, plenty of soil, plenty of trees, plenty of mineral resources. Now the crunch is coming, and there are a couple of urgent responses we need to make. We need to ensure that a good proportion of the staggeringly huge profits being made from digging up those made-once-only mineral resources come back to benefit the 21,999,997 of us who are not mining billionaires. That they are used to create a stronger better Australia as a solid home for us when resources start to dwindle or the demand for them disappears. One of the things we could do with it is sort out infrastructure needs as the climate changes – infrastructure like efficient irrigation, like decent efficient transport, like support for large scale renewable energy projects. And support for individuals in education, health, aged care and so on. The recent budget, trying to balance all those needs, pulling up the blanket to cover the head only to expose the toes, is a classic example of failure to use the mining resources wisely.

And the other response is to stop destroying remaining forests and to start restoring soils to good health. Not least because we need the environment as healthy as it can be to meet the changing climate.

What’s that other saying? Oh yes,”A stitch in time saves nine. Time we started urgent stitching.

Letter to the Reader

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by Media • Tags: , , , ,

G’Day. Hi. Bonjour. Hullo. Guten Tag. Mornin’ all. A multilingual greeting to mark a new update of the clustrmap which has been analysing where Watermelon visitors come from geographically (see “Map of recent visits” about half way down right hand column). Runs in a great arc from New Zealand through SE Asia and Europe to NW USA, with relatively few from Africa and South America. But a very pleasing spread, Watermelon fans are a very cosmopolitan lot! Couple of odd stats. There are as many visitors from the US as from New South Wales, where I live. There are as many visitors from California, 20,000km away as there are from the Australian Capital Territory 50km away. The number of visitors from the UK is only one sixth of those from the US. Go figure. Anyway, wherever you come from, welcome, come again please.

“How am I”, I hear you ask? [The early part of this recent saga is the currently last chapter of my autobiography under the "Dream" tab above]. Well, do you want the good news or the bad news? No, not quite, but if 2011 was the year of having unpleasant treatments to deal with an unpleasant disease, 2012 is the year of dealing with the side-effects, after-effects, of that treatment, while continuing part of the treatment for 2 more years to prevent re-occurrence. Sort of like juggling a set of quite different objects – keeping ball, knife, glass of water and bunch of flowers in air simultaneously while standing on one leg and singing “Yesterday”. The two most common things people say to me (in a relieved tone of voice) are “You’re looking well” and “Aren’t you lucky”. Both, while absolutely true, make me quietly rage inside.

Which reminds me. Down at the bottom of the right hand column, “I am reading” I try to keep up to date what I am, you know, currently reading. Have been through a series lately of biographies of Rousseau, Keating, now Steve Jobs, and shortly Dickens. Not as bizarre a mixture as it might seem. Couple of common threads. Four geniuses, each in his own way, four absolutely unique characters in the way we all aspire to being unique, moulds broken etc. And all four, conversely, really difficult, in many ways unpleasant characters, while exuding charisma and often charm. Self-centred, driven, paranoid, domineering, thoughtless, careless with human relationships, and so on. People with a rage inside and often a rage outside as well. All to different degrees, obviously, in different combinations, but put the four in a room together and it would be an intellectual cage fight, no holds barred. But all admirable for their creativity. Do the two things go together? Is genius, creativity, necessarily associated with the kind of person you wouldn’t want to share a house with and certainly wouldn’t want to work for? Do nice guys and gals finish last? Do we have to put up with bad manners from people who are doing great things? Yes, it’s an old question, and I doubt it will ever be answered. Certainly not in a single post on a blog no matter how creative, how much a work of genius, that blog is. Which brings me to the final part of this Letter to the Reader

Decided to enter the blog in the “Best Australian Blogs” competition. You’ll see the logo button in the right column near the top. Click on it and it will take you to the Sydney Writer’s Centre site with all kinds of information about the help they provide to new and old writers, including courses (both for locals and online for people from America, Britain, France … Guadeloupe) and so on. Go on, have a look, I’ll wait until you get back.


Hullo, back already? Hope that was of interest to any budding or established writers among my blog friends. Anyway, when I entered they sent the information below. Have a quick read and then I’ll ask you to do couple of things for me.

What’s happening with the People’s Choice Award?
If you’ve entered the People’s Choice Award, you’ll receive an email on Thursday 12 April 2012 with details about how this round will work. Remember that nominations do not count as votes. So we recommend you let your followers know you’ve entered, and get them ready to vote for you from 5.00pm on Friday 13 April 2012.

We will start sorting blogs on Friday 13 April 2012
So make sure your blog is as good as it possibly can be by the 13th! Any great ideas you’ve always wanted to write about, or that face-lift you’ve been struggling to make the time for, make sure you squeeze it in by Friday 13 April 2012!

What criteria will your blog be judged on?
The criteria for the Best Australian Blogs competition is 70% writing, 20% appearance of your blog and 10% interaction and social media. Make sure your social media activity can be discovered through your blog.

Now you know what I am going to say. Do I need to do anything to give the blog a face lift (within limits of WordPress)? Any features you’d like to see, anything you don’t like? You are the customers, always right. Well, maybe not always, but, you know. It’s your blog, I just work here, let me know how you feel about the content (which goes for anytime of course, not just with a competition on). Second, one of the criteria for the judged part (as distinct from the People’s Choice” part) is relationship to social media. I’m very active on Twitter, and if you like what I do here you will like what I do there. Easy to follow, just click on the “Follow Watermelon_Man” button on the right. I’m always encouraging my Twitter followers to visit the blog, and they do, and it would be great to have more movement from this direction. Conversely, more of you actually following this blog to get automatic updates would look good for my blog cred. And finally, when the 13 April looms, It would be really great if you could vote for me. I will put a post up, with instructions, but it won’t be complicated.

What’s in it for you? Well, a warm sense of pride that you chose wisely all that time ago and are following a really really good blog. A short list or win would boost visitors so I would have to perform even better for you all, and there would be a lot more commenters for you to interact with. And finally the prizes involve writing courses at the Centre, so I could learn to write more proper and you would get a much better quality blog. So, easy, suggestions for improvement before the eagle-eyed blog judges come calling; twitter following; and then a really high voter turn out come 13 April. Bit of a boost to this old ego, that’d be.

Cheers!

I have a dream

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

One of the consequences of the various items in my apothecary’s materia medica cupboard has been an increased richness, frequency, intensity, activity of dreams. Not, I hasten to add, either bad nightmares (or very rarely) on the one hand, or anything really nice on the other, just frantic activity of a mundane and apparently real kind. Usually I can’t remember anything about the five or six each night longer than it takes to go back to sleep, or have breakfast at the end of the exhausting proceedings, but every so often one sticks.

I am reminded here of one of my favourite James Thurber stories (a tautological phrase). It concerns a married couple where, over time, the wife takes to correcting, in more and more detail, the anecdotes her husband tells at parties. Eventually it gets to the point where he can no longer tell a real life story because of the interruptions and corrections, so he takes to telling invented imaginary dreams. This works briefly, but then she starts correcting the dreams. He finishes up in an asylum, reduced to telling one invented dream over and over, getting it “wrong”, and being corrected by his wife who sits by his bed.

Not that that digression has anything to do with me, I hasten to add, it is just that, having a lot of dreams to deal with, the story came back to me.

So, where was I? Ah yes, remembered one from the other night, perhaps because it was so different from the usual sort of running through an airport late for a plane, or trying to get a car repaired, or almost playing cricket for Australia. Not even sure what triggered it, usually I can spot something that has been in the news etc. Anyway, I was visiting North Korea. Yep, I know, I knew it was odd too. But it was nothing to do with the new leadership or bombs or massed gymnasts or goose-stepping troops. Nothing at all. I was somehow visiting a small village. I was made really welcome, invited in to a house for a meal, given presents, given hugs on parting, told to come back soon. Told that I had been adopted into their village, was one of them now, part of the family, and neither they nor I could understand why their country and mine and America etc were bitter enemies. I was really touched, looking back, thinking what normal people they were, just like me, must come back and see them etc, then suddenly woke up, and poof it was gone.

Look when I say I don’t know what triggered it I probably do. It came during yet more weeks of sabre rattling everywhere – of Netanyahu and the Republicans wanting to bomb Iran back to the stone age, Hillary Clinton lecturing North Korea, the Germans lecturing Greece, America lecturing Syria, China lecturing Tibet, England lecturing Scotland, and so on. All of it done by presidents and prime ministers and foreign ministers, standing at podiums in front of massed flags, talking to their counterparts in the country being lectured. Talking also to the elites, the military top brass, the bankers, the businessmen.

But not talking to the people in my dream – the peasants – nor to the poor villagers, the farmers, the factory workers, the labourers, the public servants, the students, nurses, teachers, mothers, children. Furthermore these grand lecturers have never met any of these ordinary citizens of the countries being lectured. UN should have a rule, you are not allowed to bomb, or turn the IMF loose on, a country until you have lived for a year with some of its ordinary citizens. You listening Hillary, Angela, Benjamin?

Then see if you can bomb my dream North Koreans.

Since sliced bread

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by Uncategorized • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Was doing some cleaning up, sorting out, the Steptoesque room that is my Study, when the question arose as to whether to keep some old atlases. The answer was sort of yes, but only on the basis that I can’t bear to throw out books like that, and that I have always loved maps. But got me thinking about recent changes in the way we live now. If I want to check on something about a country, look at a map, I use the internet, not a big printed atlas. So what else has changed? Well, here is a list I put together quickly of things that no longer apply or happen that we once used to take for granted:

Wearing a wrist watch
Using lined paper
Using liquid ink
Using actual money
Using reference books
Having a newspaper delivered
Cutting unsliced bread
Postcards
Telegrams
Going to movies
Having phone plugged into wall
Shorthand
Having written address and birthday books
Following a sporting team that isn’t an “investment”
Being totally surprised by weather change
Use logarithms or slide rules
Having a piece of film developed
Speaking on phone to real person in a company
Lowering a stylus on to a music record
Visiting a bank in person

When climate change really starts to kick in, there are going to be a lot more things we can’t do that we once took for granted. But what else can you think of that we used to commonly do but do no longer? Come on, thinking caps on, elephant stamp for the mostest and bestest.

Three coins in a fountain

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by politics • Tags: , , , ,

Our extended family have always been inveterate coin collectors (and stamps but that’s another story). Oh not collectors in the sense of joining clubs, and shopping for rarities online, and having every Australian threepence, or a 1930 Australian penny; but collectors in the sense of putting in a jar unusual coins picked up here there and everywhere and keeping them for the next 100 years in the sure and certain knowledge that one day they would be worth a lot of money to the great grandchildren.

So I have been going through the accumulated results of all this, and have old coins spread all over the table, trying to see what they are, and what, if anything they are worth. Short answer – nothing. I keep finding bits on the internet saying things like well, everyone collected 50 cent commemorative coins and there were millions made, so worthless. We have a lot of 50c commemorative coins. Same for every jar, every box, every bag I opened. You want to know the least valuable old coins from Australia, Britain, America, France, Greece, New Zealand, Japan, Palestine, I’ve got ‘em on a list.

Hang on “Palestine” 1935, that’s interesting. Wonder how … Oh yes, of course. Have a photo of my father in Tel Aviv in the war. And then I start to think about the coins not in terms of monetary value but in terms of family history. And bit by bit the pattern emerged. An overseas holiday here, a job in New Zealand there, a trip to visit relatives in England, men at war (Middle East, New Guinea), migrations to Australia, men at war (Gallipoli, France), migrations to Australia. Here a soldier on leave empties the coins from his pocket; there a family puts coins from the old country, no longer of use, in a jar in a new country; and over here fathers, mothers, grandmothers, after holidays, show young children the interesting foreign coins they have in purse and wallet.

So elements of a family history, but even more than that. Many of the coins are worn, very worn. It’s one of the reasons they lack value, the coin collectors preferring “uncirculated” coins. But the wear makes them seem more valuable to me. There are British pennies so worn smooth that they are almost unreadable, dating back to mid-nineteenth century and handled by thousands, tens of thousands of people; rubbed in wallets and purses and trouser pockets and shop tills. Not so much six degrees of separation, as I hold an 1851 penny in my hand, a young Queen Victoria on one side, but a connection with all of the people who have handled it before me.

Worthless?

To be hanged with the bible

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by Atheism, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When the bible was written humans* didn’t know:
About bacteria and viruses and parasites
Blood circulation
Earth going around sun
More than 5 planets
About galaxies
There was a southern hemisphere
Earth round
What lightning is
That whales aren’t fish
What mental illness involves
About genes and inheritance
About Chinese, Aztecs, Zulus, Aborigines, Navaho, Japanese, Papuans, Bushmen, Mayans, Eskimo, Indonesians, West Africans, Britons
Composition of matter
Any history
Composition of moon
About fossils
There was a western hemisphere
The age of the Earth
About the great apes
About continental drift
About kangaroos, lemurs, opossums, emus, iguanas, alpacas, platypus, kiwi, gila lizards, sloths, tree frogs, humming birds, horseshoe crabs, peripatus, tasmanian tigers, rhinoceros

When bible written humans had never:
Flown
Travelled faster than a horse can run
Communicated except by speaking directly
Elected a government
Swum under the ocean
Read books
Looked through a telescope
Looked through a microscope
Warmed themselves by anything except wood fires
Been cured by antibiotics
Had a surgical operation
Seen a hospital, school or factory
Seen a town of more than few thousand people

When bible written humans were happy about:
Slavery
Women as chattels
Divine kings
Child marriage
War
Destruction of environment
Gods living on mountains
Child labour
Torture
Human sacrifice
Ghosts
Magic

And yet there are people in 2012 who believe everything written in the bible. There are people who use it to determine who to vote for, where to send their children to school, how they feel about burning environmental and social and economic and cultural issues. And if that wasn’t bad enough, incredible enough, we can’t just smile wisely and say “there there, one day you will grow up” as we might to a child who tries to live their life by, say, the Harry Potter books, because there are people who want to insist that the rest of the world obey these silly old books as well. There are people making all kinds of pronouncements about the environment, about bringing up children, about justice, about science, about art and literature, based not on some independent and rational analysis of an issue, but on what they think is said in the bible about it. And in turn appearing in the media, influencing politicians about it, indeed running for political office themselves. Some countries, notably Iran, Saudi Arabia, and America, are now theocracies run by people who know nothing except what someone has told them an old book says.

Angry? You betcha. The modern world is difficult enough, will become more difficult in the future, without the drag on political life from people living in the past. Can’t laugh at these people any more, this is serious.

*By “humans” in what follows I sometimes mean “the whole human race” and sometimes “the humans who wrote the bits and pieces of old manuscript that got collected together and called ‘the bible’”, which is which will be obvious and not of much importance anyway.

Fiddling while Rome burns

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , ,

It’s one of those “what-ifs” of history. You know – what if the Japanese in World War 2 had modern fighter planes, what if the Romans had tanks, what if the Spanish Armada was composed of steamships. But another version involves communications. What if the internet, mobile phones, twitter and email, digital still and video cameras, had been available at different times in history?

I’m thinking it wouldn’t have been so important for the battles between more or less equal armies, but for the invasions and occupations of countries by superior forces. For two reasons, so that those being invaded could tell each other what the hell was going on instead of being overwhelmed unawares, and so they could tell rest of the world what was happening and arouse sympathy and help.

Picture the Romans entering Britain, Spaniards into Central America, British into Australia and India, Greeks into Middle East. Imagine what the French resistance could have done as the Germans occupied, what the people of south east Asia could have reported about the Japanese. Imagine indeed what the Jewish people, and the German resistance, could have revealed about conditions in Germany in the 1930s and in the war. The British in China, the Japanese in China, the Portugese and Dutch in Africa, the Russians in eastern Europe, the Vikings in Britain, the Turks in Austria, Genghis Khan everywhere. If all the countries invaded could have quickly communicated with each other (The Eora and Dharug for example letting others know outside Sydney Cove what these Redcoats and convicts were up to; letting the world know they were being invaded, shot, land taken, dying of smallpox) invasions would have been harder, occupations perhaps shorter and less brutal.

And the world’s tyrants would have had a more difficult time – Caligula and Bloody Mary, Hitler and Stalin, Egyptian and Aztec rulers, Chinese emperors, South American generals. All would have had problems keeping brutality going, maintaining their power, faced with a flood of information to the world via the internet.

And yet. We have those tools today. Brave people getting stories, photos, film out from Syria most recently. And every report is prefaced by disclaimers from mainstream media – this may not be true, can’t verify, it is said that, purports to show, apparently results from. Every piece of footage, photo, recording, secret interview, is prefaced by disclaimers so as to make it impossible to know the truth. So that viewers, listeners, treat all this material as rumours of no more credibility than any other rumours. And we have to be very careful about terminology like “invasion” “occupation” “freedom fighter” “rebel” “terrorist”, have to be careful not to offend dictators who are on our side or are good trading partners. Have to present news about such events as “he said-she said”.

Internet technology make a difference in the past? I doubt it. Video footage of Nero with box of matches setting fire to Rome? Couldn’t be verified.

Give the order

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by Climate Change, Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

You all remember Old King Canute taking his throne down to the beach, right – “Cnut set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes. Yet “continuing to rise as usual [the tide] dashed over his feet and legs without respect to his royal person. Then the king leapt backwards, saying: “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.”

Possibly true, possibly not. It was a thousand years ago, if it happened, and our media finds it impossible to recount accurately something that happened 1000 minutes ago. But if it wasn’t then it should have been. Should have been read out to every subsequent king and baron. Oh not the god nonsense of course, they did enough of that for themselves, but the idea that the most powerful person had no control over the natural world and its “laws”.

Certainly should be read out to Ms Gina Rinehart, richest woman in the universe, well, Australia anyway, and probably the one with the greatest hubris, now that Maggie Thatcher and Sarah Palin have left politics.

She was fairly private and low key until a couple of years ago. Then she emerged in the front of a crowd of well-dressed protesters, with professionally printed signs, bused in from a nearby office to stand at attention on astroturf. It was a very small crowd, but with the use of a camera carefully focussed just on the front row, managed to give the most inaccurate record of an event since US soldiers pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein in a pretence it was a sign of popular support for the invasion.

But I digress. There was Gina (was she holding a sign? I forget) chanting with the others “Whaddawe want? No taxes for billionaires. Whendowe want it? Now”. No, I made that up a little bit, a rough translation but capturing the essence of the event.

Made so much noise that day and other days through the media they won the debate, tax essentially dropped, prime minister dumped from office partly as a result. Power, sure, but not much different to the power the very rich have been exerting in this egalitarian society for 200 years.

And then I read this and suddenly we were into much more sinister doings. Into the American world of the Koch Brothers, and PACs, corporations as people, and the Heritage Foundation.

So it has gone ahead. Last few days have seen Rinehart taking the major shareholding in Fairfax, Plimer appointed to her boards. And the IPA, apparently also supported by her financially has, over the last few years, become ubiquitous almost daily across all the media of the ABC. Some of the details about this are available here and here and here.

So we are reaching a situation where Murdoch controls 70% of the Australian commercial media, Rinehart in effect will control much of the rest, and the IPA is ensuring that the ABC takes a strongly right wing view of every issue and climate change is scarcely ever mentioned.

So expect over the next decades, that these powerful people will ensure the election of an ultra conservative Coalition government, the media will release only information it wants released and will tell you what to think about it, that no action witll be taken on climate change in any way, and environmental protection and regulation will be smashed. I can see no way of stopping this no matter how many of us blog away in our small corners of this brown land. Twenty billion dollars versus twenty million people in a democracy? No contest.

But then in ten years time I have a picture of this lonely woman sitting on a throne on a beach. Behind her a gaggle of shock jocks and climate change deniers and mining CEOs and conservative politicians. One of them is saying “Give the order, O great Queen, and it will obey”. She is holding out her hand to the sea and commanding “climate stop changing”, but then she gets drowned by the rising water levels and I can see her no more.

Ignorance is strength

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by Education, Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How can every human being on the planet not spend their days being puzzled about pretty much everything?

Every day I ask myself questions like: How does that work? Why did that happen? Who was responsible for that? What was the purpose of that? Where did that come from? Constantly, one or more of the interrogatives – Who? What? Why? Where? When? – applied to the natural, political, built, mechanical, social worlds.

Can never remember a time when I wasn’t curious, puzzled, interested about the world around me. All children are I thought. But it seems many adults lose the curiosity. Seem to settle for a quiet intellectual life in which people they believe are authority figures tell them how things are, the way they are going to be, and they accept the propositions as given.

How else can you explain the willingness of the 99% to vote, in spite of conservative failures over 50 years or more, against their interests and elect neoconservative governments? How else can you explain the lack of action on climate change? How else explain the successful campaigns by rich miners (originally a typo almost had them as rich moners), by alcohol sellers, poker machine makers and clubs, developers, fishermen.

How else too can you explain the following of fundamentalist religions, of fake medical “cures” like homeopathy and naturopathy, of faith healers and “psychics”, of get rich quick schemes, of populist politicians.

And how else explain why we, the people, accept incuriously what the mainstream media tells us, asking no questions so told all lies. No one it seems is puzzled when they are told one thing one day, the opposite thing the next day; or when told about two identical actions by two political leaders, one of which is great the other abhorrent.

No one is puzzled when the ‘reasons’ given for starting a war turn out to be completely spurious; when behaviour said to be perfectly safe turns out disastrous; no one is puzzled that “We’ve always been at war with Eastasia”; no one thinks it odd that “The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation”.

Oh yes, quoting Orwell is so 1980s isn’t it? But it seems increasingly that not only are political parties and whole countries using it as a manual for controlling and manipulating the public, but so are the media. Think of just three aspects. Winston Smith’s job involves dealing with “unpersons”, people now deemed politically embarrassing, so he alters records, changes photographs, to ensure that the person has not just disappeared from modern awareness, but from history as well. Then, to fill a gap where the unperson once appeared he invents “Comrade Ogilvy, a fictional party member, who displayed great heroism by leaping into the sea from a helicopter so that the dispatches he was carrying would not fall into enemy hands”.

Finally of course the idea of our tv screens watching us hasn’t happened (although …), but the tabloid press tapping phones, going through rubbish bins, and governments using spy satellites and getting internet records means the sense of privacy, lost in “1984″, is rapidly being lost here.

Inner Party member O’Brien says that in the future “There will be no curiosity”. And he is right. The public it seems now have no curiosity. And therefore the media can create a fictional narrative, an alternative to reality, that people will simply accept as truth. And in that reality they will also accept what conservative political leaders tell them.

So, I hear you ask, what is the answer?

Well, you don’t need me to tell you, the answer is “education” of course, teach kids to question, not rote learn, to be curious … oh, sorry, no, can’t keep that up.

Do you think the Inner Party doesn’t know that? Why else have preschools been privatised, religious and other private schools been massively funded, public schools and teachers constantly attacked, demands always made for more “3 Rs” (plus trade courses) to be taught and none of this “contentious” stuff about climate change or politics, ethics classes attacked and religious ones (with “chaplains”) encouraged, all attempts to encourage thinking slammed as being brain washing by the Left? Why the call for kids to leave school early and get jobs? Why the determined defunding of universities, the encouragement to teach more business courses and less “Arts”, the push for private paying students, the defunding of student unions, the constant attacks on any political involvement by students, the constant attacks on university lecturers for being Left Wing?

The 1960s and 70s gave the Inner Party a big shock. This is what happens when children are taught to think in school and university and they were having no more of that. So they have thrashed the curiosity out of education (with the willing acquiescence of the Labor Party, also not keen to see too much curiosity about its own policies and behaviour).

So no, I don’t have an answer. Anyone for a job in the Ministry of Truth? Plenty available.