Tilting at Windmills

Now there’s an old saying that many these days will never have heard, let alone know the meaning of. It’s something I seem to be doing a lot lately – although I am left wondering just how many of my ‘enemies’ are imaginary.  Certainly, the ones I fear when writing probably are.

Writer’s block is a fairly common ailment amongst writers, but my problem seems to stem not from not being able to put words on paper but from a fear of rejection of the words I want to put on paper. Actually, that’s the root of so many of my problems, but for now I’ll just deal with writing.

I started a blog a few years ago, before this one. It was based around workplace safety, which I felt – due to my employment, experience and qualifications at the time – suitably qualified to discuss, at least in terms of how it related to my own sphere.  I was completely unprepared for a very unpleasant attack from a reader who said I was spouting crap. It seemed strange, to me, that I had quite a decent following on WHS pages on LinkedIn and we had some very feisty and productive discussions, but here was someone I’d never encountered, a complete stranger reading my blog, who felt they had the right to abuse me. I didn’t know how to take that rejection or how to respond – especially when I didn’t think I’d said anything untoward – so I killed the blog.

A while later I started this one, specifically intended as a reflection of my own personal opinion. It’s never had a large readership, but I’ve never publicised it much. Originally it was only somewhere for me to rant and sort of like a diary I could keep for my grandkids who I never see. It’s only very recently that I have started putting the posts out on Facebook and Twitter.

Then in December 2012 my world changed, and the reasons are covered on the website I created at that time, www.itsokaytobeangry.com , and the accompanying blog http://www.itsokaytobeangry.blogspot.com.au/.  It was a hugely confronting thing to put something so personal out into the webosphere where anyone could read it. I took a calculated risk.

The third blog, http://www.aneurysmaphorisms.blogspot.com.au/, came about after I was diagnosed in July 2013 with a brain aneurysm.  I decided to diarise my experiences because there was so little information provided to me at any stage of the initial diagnosis and consultation process. I share the posts with others diagnosed with or surviving brain aneurysms on Facebook and have helped to stimulate some conversation about the condition, which is excellent!

Yet every time, before I start writing, I get a sort of writer’s block which has nothing to do with not being able to come up with words but everything to do with how people will respond or react to my words. I hate rejection, I fear rejection, I don’t know how to handle blunt rejection to my face. It has to do with my own history and the fact that I seem to have been fighting rejection of one form or another my whole life – my “windmills”. 

I was called a drama queen once by a woman who knew nothing about me. I found that term very offensive – I still do. Recently I was catching up with a friend that I haven’t spoken to since before my aneurysm diagnosis. When I rattled off the stuff that’s happened to me this year, she asked “Holy crap woman – do you go looking for life’s challenges or do they find you?” No, I don’t look for drama in my life, it just finds me. Something that other woman years ago never understood – or wasn’t interested in.

Not everyone has a happy, normal, uneventful life. I wish I did. I wish, with all of me, that I didn’t have all this crap, that it didn’t just find me, because the constant rejection that has gone hand-in-hand with all the stuff that has happened over many years has made me fearful of putting myself out there again and again. I don’t want any more rejection, I can’t deal with any more rejection.

Then I remind myself, when I started the It’s Okay to be Angry website and blog it was with a specific purpose in mind – to provide help and support for other women who had been through that aspect of what I’d been through, to know that I understood their feelings of anger and betrayal.

And I remind myself that when I started Aneurysm Aphorisms it was also with a specific purpose in mind – to document my journey and provide information for the thousands of others “out there” with aneurysms, because I was so frustrated with the lack of information readily available to me.

Then I start typing. By this stage I’m not worried about rejection any more. I have gone full circle back to where I started, sitting at my keyboard with a topic in my mind that concerns me or means enough to me to write about. So I will write about it, and I will put it on whichever blog it relates to and I will log it on Facebook and Twitter – and if anyone reads it, all good, and if no-one reads it, all good.

In the end, I understand that I am doing this for me, no-one else, and that has to be a good thing. I’m over tilting at windmills…. at least until next time.

We CAN change the world!

Tonight I sat down to write a post about the despair and anger I see every day now in this country. I wanted to find out why, where it came from, when it started. I wanted to look at it in context of my own move here in 2005, and I wanted to look at it in context of social policy.

After an hour I gave up. Everything I was reading was too depressing. There didn’t seem to be any positive stuff anywhere.

What happened to the “lucky country” that I moved to nearly 9 years ago? What happened to the sense of community that so awed me the first couple of years?

I spend a lot of time on social media – way too much, truth be known, but I don’t watch TV and I don’t read newspapers. I refuse to support anything that originates from Murdoch or Fairfax, so I Google, I Facebook, I Twitter. It’s in these places that I find the angst of those who feel so disenfranchised by what is happening in Australia now, today, this year.

This is an Australia no-one ever imagined, where environment takes a back seat to corporate greed and land lust; where the first female prime minister can be subjected to some pretty disgusting sexist personal attacks; where refugees are detained in inhumane conditions because no-one knows how or wants to manage a growing world problem; where destruction of world heritage sites becomes just another day’s work; where people who love each other and want nothing more than the same rights as everyone else are treated as second rate citizens; where politicians believe they have a “mandate” to destroy everything that is just and right; where one class of person – Kiwis - is left to slip through the cracks because no-one would ever define them as needing assistance. Most Australians would not even know about the injustice of being a Kiwi in this “lucky” country.

The saddest part of all, for me, is talking to people who have no idea that their comments are racist or sexist or homophobic, but who, for the most part, are simply parroting the daily sludge fed to them by the mainstream media. It’s called indoctrination.  And if we thought it was being done to our kids by a religious cult, we’d scream bloody blue murder.  But it’s being done insidiously, every day, by something much more powerful and therefore much more dangerous.

I have joined marches for Climate Change, to Fight for the Reef, for Marriage Equality, to Reclaim the Night. I have danced and sung and shouted and tweeted to bring attention to the growing problem of violence against women and children.  I have blogged and railed against the health system, signed petitions to save the orangutans and whales and dolphins, I am anti BSL, anti pornography and anti guns. I am a proud feminist.  But the problem I see everywhere is that there is no coherence to the fight against… anything. A serious discussion with most thinking people will reveal that they have a similar basic humanist philosophy, and yet the organisations they belong to are different than the ones I belong to, and often even have different means of attempting to achieve the same result.

This is a huge problem, because the “enemy” – corporate greed, dehumanizing of problems to suit political agendas, haves and have nots – are the same, and they have the resources that we, as individuals, never will.  It will only be by coherent and integrated means that we will ever stand up against the destruction of society as we know it.

Every day I see someone saying “It’s time”.  YES, it IS time – time to join together and take back – or even start again – a world that is built on compassion, not money.  Idealistic? Maybe. But who can really justify the spending of trillions of dollars annually for wars which serve no good purpose, when the entire world can be fed for a fraction of that price tag?

We’ve tried war.  We’ve tried greed. We’ve tried destruction and capitalism and rape and violence and none of those things have worked.

We have never tried compassion.  Why not?

Let’s start here, now, in Australia.

Political wastelands and the idealism of democracy

tyr·an·ny

[tir-uh-nee]

arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority.

Synonyms: despotism, absolutism, dictatorship.

Do you feel the despair in the air? Do you hear the growing chorus of discontent, state wide and nationally? 

More than two years ago a little man in Queensland proclaimed his desire to follow his reign as Lord Mayor of Brisbane with the Premiership of Queensland.  Campbell Newman had already shown his “think big” colours as mayor with his “Trans Apex” project for 5 tunnels under the city. History has shown that this was a dream not supported by reality.

After the opening of the much vaunted but severely under-used Clem Jones tunnel, RiverCity Motorways went into receivership.  Investors will never see a return on their investment. The tunnel was completed on-time and on-budget but, due to incorrect predictions of traffic volume, has been an economic failure.

The Airport Link tunnel faced similar problems when the share price collapsed as investors discovered the predicted traffic flow was fantasy and tried desperately to divest themselves of worthless shares.  Traffic forecaster Arup, acting for the developer BrisConnections, predicted 135,000 vehicles a day. Airport Link went into receivership in February 2013 with an average daily traffic use of only 47,802 vehicles.

The Go Between Bridge was estimated to serve 20,300 vehicles a day, but the highest number of vehicles to use the bridge in the first year after opening was 15,783 in March 2012.

Legacy Way, the latest part of the project, was predicted to be used by 24,000 vehicles a day – but traffic projectors tell a different story.

Prior to the state election in 2012 the LNP’s stated intention was to “get Queensland back on track”, which, it said, meant “restoring the economy, easing the cost of living and cutting government waste. It means planning properly to build better infrastructure and improving health, police, education and other frontline services.” This year, a pre-budget report issued to Newman’s government by the Australian Industry group showed that, far from restoring the economy, LNP is moving backwards. “Our research found 63 per cent of Queensland company CEO’s expect general business conditions to be weaker in 2013 than 2012. This compares to a national figure of 52 per cent, some 11 points higher.”

In the lead up to the 2012 election LNP waged wars on many fronts, always hyped by spin.  According to LNP, Labour was planning on cutting 41,000 public servants – but that figure was proven to be spin. After the election LNP went on to cut 14,000 jobs – 9,000 more than Labour had ever proposed, despite Newman, in a December 2011 interview, suggesting any reduced numbers would come through natural attrition rather than job cuts.

Everything the Labour state government did was challenged by LNP, with Campbell Newman at the helm.  An electorate which bought the LNP spin threw out the Labour government and gave free reign to Campbell’s despotic ambitions.  The electorate was warned by Anna Bligh that Newman would become a 'slash and burn' Premier whose cuts would impact on essential frontline services such as police, nursing and teaching, as well as on the environment. Time has shown her to be right on the money. Queensland’s LNP state government continues to break promises, lie, spin and thumb their collective noses at not only those who didn’t vote for them but also those who did, and their disregard for the environment is shameful.

Fast forward to the run up to the 2013 federal election, and history repeated on a national level, aided by a fawning Murdoch press.  The personal attacks on Julia Gillard mirrored and then magnified a thousand-fold those on Anna Bligh.  The Libs wasted no opportunity to heckle the federal Labour government, and Murdoch media headlines trumpeted calls not just to the Liberal faithful but also to those it felt were borderline and feeling disenfranchised in any way.  The drubbing the federal Labour party got in the polls echoed the defeat in Queensland.

And then the new federal government began breaking their promises, just as the Queensland state government had done. Déjà vu.

The subsequent shameless backflipping and reverse tactics have left the country numb with a sort of shock, as if the voters had no idea this betrayal was on the cards.  In only 100 days the Abbott government has shown that it doesn’t give a damn about parliamentary procedure, the environment, the economy – which, when they took power, was one of the best in the world – or, frankly, anyone but themselves.  They have offended Indonesia, China and Sri Lanka and failed to immediately fly flags at half mast on the death of Nelson Mandela, as the rest of the world did.

Newman in Queensland and Abbott federally continue to claim their “mandate” at election for the changes they are making, but no-one gave them a mandate to destroy the environment, take money from schools and claw back pay rises from pre-school educators, change parliamentary procedures that they themselves often used to their own advantage when in opposition, reduce frontline public service roles or feather their own nests at the expense of taxpayers.

The attitudes displayed by Newman and his cronies in Queensland and Abbott’s bunch of slash-and-burn upstarts in Canberra constitute an arbitrary and unrestrained exercise of power and a despotic abuse of authority.

Tyranny is alive and thriving under the Libs/LNP.  In any other workplace an employer could get rid of an employee who treated the “company” with such contempt.  Why, in an alleged “democracy” is the same redress not available to the employers of these politicians, Australian citizens?  Do we really have to wait until this mob completely destroys everything before someone will take definitive action to stop them?

Political colours

My dad was political blue through and through.  He was brought up in a time of New Zealand Labour’s Michael Joseph Savage and Peter Fraser.  I never knew why, with such a red childhood, he became so blue.

Dad was a joiner by trade, and a self-employed builder doing alterations and additions and the occasional spec house most of his working life.  When he was in his early 20s he lost all the fingers off his left hand in an argument with a skill saw, but the lack of fingers never stopped him – he had stumps and he used them to very good advantage.

As a working class man with a wife and 5 kids to support, I would have thought Labour would have been his natural bent. Perhaps it was because National’s Sid Holland, Keith Holyoake and Jack Marshall led the country from 1949 right through until 1972, with only a 3 year break from 1957 to 1960 when Labour’s Walter Nash took the reins, that dad became blue. 

His conservatism didn’t seem to reflect in our everyday life. He supported capitalism but never owned shares. He built both of the houses I lived in as a child and teenager, as well as much of the furniture.  He was hands on with everything from upholstery and car repairs to fixing mum’s sewing machine or washing machine when they broke down. We were not poor, but neither were we affluent.  Affluence doesn’t come easily to a family with 5 kids on one income from a self-employed tradie, but we had good food on the table, happy childhoods and the occasional holiday at the beach.  Maybe dad thought his ability to provide these things for his family was due to the stability of 20 years of almost continuous blue government.

I became politically aware in 1970, my first year of high school.  During 1970-71 I, like many of my school mates, took part in anti-Viet Nam protests and began to actively question dad on his political beliefs. When Norm Kirk was elected for Labour in 1972 I celebrated, while dad grumbled about where the country was going to end up.  He was grudgingly tolerant though, until Kirk died suddenly in August 1974 and Bill Rowling took over.  Dad hated Rowling with a passion, and celebrated when “the Weasel” lost the election to National – and Robert “Piggy” Muldoon – in 1975. The subsequent 9 years under Muldoon’s fiscal control polarized the country, but dad remained staunchly blue.  I moved out of home in 1975, but our political spats continued every time I visited and escalated during the violence of the 1981 Springbok rugby tour, when dad’s anti-red sentiments seemed to lose all sense of reason.

When Labour won the 1984 snap election with David Lange at the helm, dad was incensed.  He felt the country had betrayed Muldoon.  He simmered, mostly quietly, occasionally loudly vocal – often when I wound him up – and celebrated when Jim “Spud” Bolger led National to election victory in 1990. 

By now, with most of his kids moved out of the family home, dad spent much of his down time in front of either sport or politics on the TV. When the politics got too much for him he would storm out of the lounge and vanish downstairs to his workshop where he would either make or fix something to settle his turmoil. 

In 1991 he had a new nemesis – Winston Peters, who was fired from the National Party and formed his own NZ First party in 1993.  Dad’s passion against this man was probably even more than his passion had been against the Weasel, and he railed against NZ First’s election wins in 1996 when they held the balance of power in parliament. Although Peters’ coalition with National gave blue the reins of government, dad felt Peters betrayed everything he stood for.  He celebrated when NZ First lost a lot of their seats when Labour won the 1999 election under Helen Clark.

My dad died on 24 June 2001.  He never changed colour, not once, in his entire life, but although he was blue from head to toe he never, despite our political arguments and dialogues, tried to influence any of us in our political direction.  I often wondered, in the years after his death, how this intensely blue man must have felt at times to know that at least one of his kids was the proverbial “red under the bed”.  I think he would have been very proud that I had the courage of my own convictions, just as he had had for so many years.