Christmas - what does it mean now?

Christmas - this time of year means different things to many people. To a Jewish acquaintance of mine for example, it means a festival that puts her on the outer with most of the people she usually associates with. One thing that it has increasingly meant is garish displays of decorations at family homes. Contests are run to find the 'best'. Tours are scheduled to travel around the more lavishly decorated. Locations of decorated homes are often published in local newspapers.

If someone wants to decorate their home, then in general principle that is fine with me provided of course that it isn't something truly offensive like a neo-nazi display or a salute to serial killers. But there is another aspect to the story.

Are we not in a time when we should be considering the environmental impacts of pretty much everything? The nations of the world have only recently concluded an angst-ridden conference to tackle the issue of global warming. Yet each December, we start on an orgy of excess consumption of fossil-fuel-powered electricity to light up garish garden displays of lights of all sorts. Largely plastic decorations - yet more petrochemical consumption - are invested in and displayed all over the place. Yet more consumption of fuel for the trails of motor vehicles going around the 'tours' of garden Christmas 'decorations'. How many light globes alone, are consumed each year in this exercise?

There are those that find putting together this display a thing of joy to do. Someone that I knew, sadly passed away now far too young, absolutely delighted in putting together a Christmas display in her front garden. But her motivation was a little different. She and her siblings didn't have much of a Christmas such as that most of us take for granted. Sure, there were presents etc, but they were on open display for long beforehand, not even wrapped. There was not even an attempt at a Santa Claus pretense. So Sandra was determined to give her children the sort of Christmas she and her siblings were basically denied. That sort of motivation I can understand.

Sadly, understandable motivations like that would appear to becoming less of the norm. Instead, we see a growing trend of 'keeping up with the Joneses.'

"Look honey - the neighbours have seven more lights than we do. Get yourself over to Bunnings immediately and don't come back until you have at least three more full strings of lights to put across the front of our place. And another couple of plastic reindeer. Do you think everyone can see our plastic Santa doing the limbo or should I turn the volume up to Three on the Richter Scale?"

When creating garish eyesores as supposed decorations becomes essentially a fashion statement, it is high time to put the whole stupid lot away - for good. If nothing else, ask yourself how much those excess decorations are adding to the greenhouse gas emissions - not just the power consumption of lights but also the resources consumed in manufacturing, transporting etc. Or consider how much more good could have been done by investing the same funds into welfare programs? Or even just as donations to charity? Or helping those we know who may be going through hard times.

Ageism is alive and well

Don’t let anyone kid you that ageism doesn’t exist in our society. It is very much alive and well.

I was forced to leave the labour force at age 44 through no fault of mine, on invalidity. It as a matter of record that the health injury concerned was directly linked to the workplace although no regulatory body is the slightest bit interested in the fact that my dodgy, former employer, part of the public sector, quite wrongfully pursued a program of denying any such finding being made. So I was eventually forced out.

Interestingly, representatives of my former employer tried to tell me what a wonderful life I was about to start enjoying as an invalid pensioner and how easy it was going to be to be employed once more once my health improved. Not that I believed it for a moment.

The reality is that there are virtually no prospects for someone once they are over forty and have the slightest hint of disability. And on almost every single occasion when I just ‘miss’ out, it is beyond mere coincidence that the successful applicant is younger than me. Now I am intelligent enough to realise that a great many applicants are going to be younger than me so it stands to reason that a large number of successful applicants shall be younger than me. But when it happens on each and every occasion?

Mind you, ageism is nothing new. I did my accounting degree in the early 1990s as a mature age student finishing at the grand old age of 29. During my final year, along with a lot of other commerce students, I attended an open day for the accounting profession at the Ballarat University. There, the Education and Recruitment Director for the Institute of Chartered Accountants blatantly told several students including me, that we were too old. “The profession doesn’t want you,” she said. Those incredibly inappropriate words are burned into my brain. At 29, I was too old? I spat the dummy and spent the rest of the afternoon sulking in the student bar.

Her words proved quite prophetic. When I began applying to the major accounting firms, there was no interest despite good results. My mistake? I admitted to being 29 in my applications. I whinged about it to some of the senior accounting staff at the uni who sympathised. As far as they were concerned, this was a common occurrence. The first thing that the major firms looked at was an applicant’s age. If it was more than in their early twenties, an automatic rejection occurred. Of course the profession would hotly deny it, but any analysis of their hiring practices would tell a different story.

I put all that behind me and started a new life. But at 44, I was thrown in the scrap heap. I refused to accept it. I retrained, improving my qualifications and experience. All for nothing.

Now because my pension is paid from a superannuation fund, not via Centrelink, I am automatically disqualified from various forms of assistance. My pension is just enough to disqualify me from yet other forms of assistance such as a health care card, never mind that I carry not one but two disabilities, but nowhere near enough to be able to rent somewhere myself. So I am unable to live anywhere other than community housing in the company of junkies etc. I cannot even get into public housing, although they did tell me that as a single person, even if they were able to house me, it would most like just to be placed in one of the notorious public housing drug dens which is as bad if not worse than where I am now.

Not long before starting to type this entry, I had to call the police because in the adjoining block, a drug user was screaming threats at another resident and the police intervention was required. Of course now I am a going to be target for being a ‘dog’ and calling the cops.

Thanks to stunning degrees of misinformation and, ultimately, outright lies at the hands of my former employer, I was denied workers compensation on a technicality, thereby denying me access to required medical treatment that I certainly cannot afford. That makes my attempts to re-enter the workplace even harder again.

The key to putting all of this behind me is to simply get back into work. More money and I can move to better surroundings. I can afford more of the required medical treatment. I can make myself an even more desirable job seeker. Yet after considerable efforts, this is proving a staggering waste of time. A multi-qualified individual with a strong set of experiences and skills, I could not even get so much as a poxy casual job with the Christmas casuals. I now cannot even afford to travel down to spend Christmas with my aging parents this year. I have no idea how I am going to break that news to them.

For some reason, nobody gives a damn about those who fall through the cracks and seemingly nothing but insurmountable obstacles are placed in the way of them if they try to rise above it all.

The moral of the story is, if anyone over 40 is ever in danger of being forced out of the workplace on health grounds, do anything and everything to fight it. Cling on by your fingernails. Use every single possible means of fighting it. Find and use any and all avenues of appeal. Because once you have been thrown onto that scrap heap, you’re going to stay there.

The end of the job network saga

I posted some entries about the ludicrous nonsense I was put through in trying to join a job network under the Job Search Australia program. Time to post the final outcome.

I was finally admitted to the program that I had tried to join back in July. However as a direct result the staggering degrees of messing around that were only resolved after I had to resort to the DEEEWR complaints line, I was only finally admitted to the desired service so late in the year, that there is virtually nothing that they can do to assist me until next year. The job market simply dries up this time of year.

I received a written apology from the job network that took me on but not only didn’t have anyone to assign me to, but then initially refused to allow my file to be transferred to my preferred supplier.

I have written to the assessment service that not only caused the problem in the first place but then gave me entirely incorrect information that started me having to commence everything through Centrelink again. I was forced to make many pointless telephone calls to Sydney at STD rates. I am yet to receive a response let alone any dialogue on reimbursing me for me unnecessary STD telephone calls.

If matters had been handled properly in the first place, I may well have been in work by now as a result of that support that is available. But now there is nothing that they can do for me until the Canberra business world starts ‘working’ again next year. And my own attempts at finding work have been a staggering failure for some time now.

Who's ignorant and uneducated?

Last Wednesday, Prof Alan Fels stated in the wake of the government refusing to enact the recommendations by Fels to lift Parallel Import Restrictions, that the public had the government to blame for more expensive books. Now he has changed his story.

In a very public display of what can only be described as pique, Fels has claimed that the government has bowed to the opinions of a small number of ignorant and uneducated authors.

Who the hell does Fels think he is? I am a published author in my own small way. I joined the campaign against lifting PIRs. I am an accountant and economic statistician by qualification and experience as well as holding post-graduate professional writing studies. I take considerable offence at this clown calling me either ignorant or uneducated. This coming Thursday I shall be interviewing a highly successful author who holds three separate degrees as well as a Doctorate in Human Letters. My, we authors really are an uneducated lot, aren't we!

This is the same Prof Fels who for years while heading the ACCC, continually claimed that there was no evidence of any wrong-doing by oil companies. Meanwhile, we ignorant, uneducated slobs, did the practical thing of watching the pump prices. Whereas any reduction in the price of crude (ah - the joys of petrol pricing parity, gifted to the nation by then-Treasurer John Howard in the late 1970s - whatever happened to him by the way?) took a week or so to 'filter' through to the pump price, yet the moment there was an increase in the price of crude, it immediately hit the pumps. That happened across the board, regardless of company or location. But that was apparently too bleedin' obvious for the good Prof to notice.

Prof Fels has made quite a deal of noise about the price reductions he claims would have resulted from lifting PIRs, by comparing the price of a book available in say the USA with the same available here in Australia. The coalition of major book retailers, lead by Dymocks, who have been staunch supporters of Fels in this matter, have stated that the reduction that may have resulted could have been as much as 12%. However the price differentials that Fels likes to show off were far greater than a potential maximum of 12%. So even his supporters, who have publicly vowed to 'continue the fight', cannot agree with him on what the savings might be.

Incidentally, the good Prof with his apparently superior education, appears to have missed out entirely on the basic economic premise of ceterus paribus, loosely translated as 'all things being equal.' Simple comparison of market prices between significantly different economies breaches that economic fundamental. But perhaps he slept in that morning at uni.

I keep harping on the point of taxation in other posts. In all the hoopla, why is it that Fels and Dymocks et al, continue to ignore the simple fact that most of that potential 12% saving could be achieved in one fell swoop (pun intended) by removing taxation on books? I seem to remember the then-Labour Opposition joining with the Australian Democrats in opposing introduction of GST on books, prior to the Democrats leader, Meg Lees, blatantly rolling over for John Howard in the Senate.

We already have a taxation infrastructure for managing exemption of certain 'supplies'. It would not be a big deal to extend those to cover exemption of books. But Fels, in his apparent wisdom as a product of his superior education, pushes instead for a scheme that would require creation of new, expensive infrastructure, not to mention the imposition on the tax-paying public of the proposed government grants to compensate authors for the loss of income that Fels admits would result.

On this subject of author income, please do realise that we aren't all J. K. Rowling, getting mega-bucks. Studies have shown that writers as a whole are very poorly paid. We are not in general a pack of greedy oiks, complaining because we can't upgrade the Rolls this year or have to put off installing that helipad.

Throughout this saga, Fels and Dymocks et al have continually claimed that the object of the exercise was to realise cheaper book prices, yet the simple measure of removing taxation is ignored in favour of a set-up that would have the long-term impact of a wrecking ball smashed into the Australian publishing industry, under the guise of having market forces driving price reductions.

Another significant point consistently overlooked by Fels and co is that the likes of the USA and the UK flatly refuse to have anything to do with lifting their own equivalents of PIRs. Yet those are the economies that stand to benefit by dumping onto the Australian market. That product would not necessarily even be the same as that published here. Take the example of the author Michael Robotham. He is a major seller in both the UK and the USA. However on at least one occasion, the US publisher made him rewrite part of a novel, removing part of the text, because it was too 'sophisticated' for the US market. Robotham has told me that the box of freebies of that US edition that he was given, remains unopened because as far as he is concerned, that is not the real novel that was published elsewhere, including Australia. Guess what edition would be dumped onto our markets in the wake of lifting of PIRs.

Significantly, the major publishing chains have not supported the Fels proposals. These are multi-nationals who could have benefited by dumping excess production that through sheer economies of scale (see Prof - we're not all as ignorant as you claim and understand something of economics) can be produced cheaper there but they could see the long-term view. Driving margins down yet further, simply means there is less money available for publishers to bring on new authors. We aren't all magically like Stephen King, Jack Higgins, Bryce Courtenay or Tim Winton. In fact, at the start of their publishing careers none of them were the accomplished authors that they now are. It is already becoming harder and harder for new novelists to get into the mainstream. The Fels proposals would have pretty much screwed an entire generation of new Australian authors.

Exactly who is demonstrating their ignorance here? Not to mention chronic short-sightedness. And who stood to really benefit? The multinationals and a small number of major book retailers trying to further tighten their control of the market while pretending to be in the pursuit of some altruistic ideal.

In all of this fuss, I am reminded of the late Nigel Hawthorne in his wonderful portrayal of the English civil servant, Sir Humphrey Appleby. Sir Humphrey described the behaviour of politicians thus: "we must do something; this is something therefore we must do it."

Perhaps the good prof should consider a career in UK politics rather than acting like a petulant schoolboy, with voluble complaints when the ref has called him for a foul on the footy field. Of course he could always just take his ball and go home.

Honesty? Fairness? Don't make be laugh

Is it so wrong to expect common decency? Honesty? Fairness? Apparently in this day and age, it is.

Major employers are allowed to lie through their teeth to workers compensation insurers, coincidentally keeping their insurance premiums down by minimising the number of successful claims. The insurer is allowed to apply law that isn’t even in effect at the time of your claim, despite said law not being retrospective. You are allowed to simply ignore findings of bodies such as the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. In the public sector, the agency responsible for workers compensation and overall employee health and safety, Comcare, will similarly not bother worrying about workplace implications of adverse AAT findings.

Many people are like I was and of the opinion that the Commonwealth Ombudsman was an independent arbiter. Nope. It if is in anyway connected to a workplace, they will claim that the matter arises out of employment and is therefore out of scope of their office. Offer up evidence of blatant lies, deception and withholding of material evidence by a governmental employer and similar evidence of the regulator, Comcare, refusing to even look at it, and still the Ombudsman shall say no, that is a matter of employment.

Nobody cares if an employer knowingly costs you any chance of having the appropriate industrial body look into things, which is in turn another excuse for the Ombudsman’s office to put it in the ‘we can’t be bothered’ file.

In short, bare-faced liars like the Australian Bureau of Statistics are allowed to do whatever the hell they like. Use staff up. Make them work excessive hours while banning them from overtime and access to higher duties (i.e. getting paid for the higher level functions that you are actually performing). Ignore medical advice and warnings whenever it is convenient to do so. Pretend you have no knowledge of workplace health issues. Above all, lie, lie and lie some more. Lie to Comcare. Lie to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. Lie in formal statements to government-appointed solicitors.

It doesn’t matter how many laws or regulations you break, or that you are acting in blatant bad faith, because nobody will do a god damned fucking thing to stop you.

As for the individual perpetrators, they get promoted.

Is it any wonder that the poor fuckers like me end up becoming so screwed up in the head that they end up with multiple suicide attempts?

yet more on the PIR issue

In wake of the decision not to lift Parallel Import Restrictions, Prof Fels has announced that from now on, all book buyers are to blame the government for more expensive prices as a result of the decision not to adopt his recommendations. An unnamed major book retailer has criticised the decision, claiming that adopting them would have lowered book prices by some 12%. I am prepared to wager that this unnamed source was in fact Dymocks, given how strongly they supported the recommendations, which just quietly would have helped strengthen their market share and dominance.

Both Fels and the likes of the Dymocks chain (that I now flatly refuse to purchase anything from) argued strenuously that the only way to bring book prices was the complicated system proposed by Fels, of lifting import restrictions, thereby creating greater 'competition' with a system of grant funding to support authors whose income had been reduced.

How about a reality check for a moment? By far the most direct means of producing an immediate reduction of 1/11th of the cover price of books is to dump GST on books. Other products are GST-exempt and such an approach would not require the creation of all new infrastructure that the Fels recommendations would have required.

If these parties crying foul at today's decision are fair dinkum, then they would have been campaigning for the government to lift taxes on books and achieve the same end result of cheaper books without throwing the equivalent of a wrecking ball through Australian publishing.

latest on the the assistance issue

Roughly a week after the matter had been passed to the provider's admin to see what could be done, when I followed up by telephone (yet another STD call I am out of pocket for) not only had nothing been done, the person had little idea what I was talking about. I probably shouldn't be surprised as this is the same admin area that has repeatedly failed to make any contact with me during the weeks of this saga, despite assurances that they would be.

In fairness, I did receive a return call this afternoon from that individual, so it would seem wheels have slowly started turning. But it has all had to be referred back to Centrelink. Not my local office mind, but to another branch office that is actually across the border, in another State, with that office waiting for a manger to decide what, if anything, can be done, and then refer it back again to my local office.

End result - I have actually gone backwards from the position I was in four months ago.

Oh and there was more little joyful bit of fun - when my preferred provider endeavored to start the process to have me transferred, I am told that the provider I was stuck with actually refused to do so.