Thought for the Day

I came across this quote on 'Daily Reckoning Australia', which somehow or other sends me daily emails.

"Australia is already completely over-invested in housing. It’s ruining the economy and destroying the quality of life for millions of people.  It’s creating a ‘rentier’ economy where the only way to get ahead is collect the rent on a property. Nobody produces anything. But more importantly, a whole country can’t get rich and stay rich by selling houses to each other."

Food for thought.

And more, from a make believe address to US college grads from the same source-

"Memorial Day and higher education have a lot in common: You have to ignore the particulars to appreciate them. Take out the inconvenient details. Remove the embarrassing facts. Often what is left is sterile nonsense.

Every Memorial Day editorial tells us our veterans fought for ‘freedom’. Yet in not a single one of America's wars was an enemy preparing to reduce our freedom.

The huns wanted Alsace, not Pennsylvania. The Philippines intended no subjugation of Indiana. And what about the Nicaraguans? Nobody even remembers the shackles they were meant to clamp onto American wrists. But after every victory, we know what happened next: The doughboys and grunts came home to higher taxes and more prohibitions.

What you learn in college is the way things are ‘supposed’ to work. But few things in real life are as simple as they're ‘supposed’ to be. Our government is not run by the people for the people. Government is merely a way one group of people — the insiders — take advantage of other people — the outsiders.

You can call it democracy or dictatorship; it hardly matters. It can be gentle and broadly tolerable...or brutal and widely detested. What makes it a government is it has a monopoly on the use of violence; ultimately, the insiders use it to get what they want.

As for the economy, you have learned about our capitalist system. You have been told that it needs regulation by the SEC, the Fed, the Department of Justice, the FDA, the FTC and other agencies to keep the capitalists honest. You have been lied to.

It's not a capitalist system; the feds took the capital out 40 years ago. Now, it depends on cronies and credit. It's a corrupt system — the product of collusion between industry and the agencies meant to regulate them. Its real purpose is to transfer more wealth and power to the insiders.

Economist William Baumol understood.

He noticed that goods-producing businesses — such as an automaker or a maker of a widget — could achieve high productivity growth, thanks to labor-saving automation and supply-chain efficiencies. He also noticed that productivity stayed more or less static in service-sector jobs, such as nursing and teaching. (Basically, a nurse needed to spend just as much time with a sick patient...and a teacher needed to spend as much time with a student.)

Despite this, wage increases in service-sector industries — education, healthcare and government — tended to keep pace with wage increases in industries where rising wage growth was justified by growing productivity.

That's part of the reason your TVs are cheap...but your healthcare has become so expensive. Not only is healthcare largely protected from competition and distorted by third parties who pay the bills, including the government and insurance companies, but also wages for healthcare workers rise, even though productivity stays more or less static.

This also helps explain why a university education is eight times more costly than it was in 1978...even though you're still getting more or less the same education. Also, as I explained on Friday, college was optional to a decent income in the 1970s. Now, it's almost obligatory.

When everything is rigged, the riggers have the money and the power. Lobbyists, lawyers, accountants, administrators: Whether you want to take a business public...or just build a house...you come face to face with someone who can stop you, with paperwork, legal razzmatazz and nauseating administration. You need to play the game, too."

Footy Comment

I get annoyed watching AFL games because of the deplorable inconsistency of the umpiring, and the blatant errors umpires make.

I saw a shocker in the round 9 game between Fremantle and Geelong, first quarter I think, before I fell asleep, or maybe I woke and saw it later in the game. The footy was kicked across to a Geelong defender who was not far out from the goal Geelong were defending. It wasn't a good kick in that it was given too much air by the the kicker, giving a Freo player a chance to intercept. He ran straight at the Geelong player who was looking at the ball in flight, interfering with him in the contest and causing him to spill the mark.

An obvious free kick to Geelong, so obvious in all the five decades plus that I have followed the sport. You can't spoil a bloke going for a mark by running at him front on and into him without having eyes on the ball and attempting to mark. In any level of the game, a basic no brainer.

I can't understand how any umpire could have not payed the free kick. To make matters worse, the Geelong player went down and the Freo spoiler picked up the ball and ran in and kicked a goal. I could not believe what my eyes saw. It was so bad. No umpire could have missed that unless he wanted to for some reason or motive unknown to me.

So many people, commentators and fans, rave on about AFL being the best game in the world. I always think well, no it's not. The rules and umpiring buggers it up. It's not the greatest game in the world. I have followed it all my life and I can't make head nor tail of the umpiring. 'Push in the back', 'prior opportunity', 'pulling the ball in while on the ground', 'chopping arms', 'shepherding in the ruck', 'he ducked his head', 'deliberate out of bounds', they all seem to be payed on the whim of an umpire sometimes, and not others a few minutes apart, let alone from game to game.

I still watch, but really, I can't follow the umpiring. It's crap.

PS  AFL attendances are down, people are complaining about many things, as well as the umpiring, including the extra charges for reserved seat ticketing, and the ridiculous food and beverage prices. These things were evident many years ago and the paying public has been gouged for so long, I can't understand why there is suddenly noise about it now. It was manifest decades ago when the chairman of the AFL was also owner of Spotless Catering, the firm with the catering rights at the MCG then, and now. The rot really set in on the reserved seating with the building of the Telstradome now Etihad stadium and seems to have spread like cancer. I don't go to the footy anymore. Maybe I'll stop watching it on TV too one of these days. It's really only the night games I watch, till I fall asleep.

Growing Up

It is time Australia grew up as a nation.

I heard it today from radical ex PM Malcolm Fraser in an interview. I think I came across it on Grist.

He has written a book soon to be published. He says Australia has never made its own foreign policy, being firstly a puppet of Britain from Federation up to after WW2, then the US since.

I agree entirely. He goes further, saying over the last 20 years the US has taken our sovereignty and we need to take it back and distance ourselves from US foreign policy, including kicking them out of Pine Gap and the Darwin base.

It is time we grew up. Make our own decisions. Become a citizen of the world, not a US sycophant.

Talking about growing up,  ANZAC DAY 2015 should be our last.

Move on, grow up. It's myth and a nonsense from a bygone time.

Grow up Australia.

"I'm sure that someday children in schools will study the history of the men who made war as you study an absurdity. They'll be shocked, just as today we are shocked with cannibalism." Golda Meir, Israeli Prime Minister (1898- 1978)

Cousin Bruce

Cousin Bruce rang me last Friday night. He's going on a six week holiday to Russia. Moscow and a trip on the river to St Petersburg, I think he said. Good luck to him. I have very little desire to go anywhere as a tourist but yes Russia, I would like to go there.

One of the good things about blogging, for me, over the years I have been doing this, is the contacts I have had from people from my past who I think, unless I blogged, I never would have heard from again. Somehow Bruce came across my blog. We have exchanged a few communiques by way of email and Facebook, and now, tired as I am, I bring myself to desk to tell  my friends of Bruce my cousin who is the son of my mother's oldest brother Ted (of two), who is 65 this year, in fact I believe his birthday is in three days and I must remember to give him my best wishes for that on Facebook where I heard of it.

We have a strong connection, Bruce and I. We share the same grandparents, Edgar and Annie Wilson. Edgar was born in 1893 and Annie, nee Pitt, in 1897. Edgar, if I'm correct, died in 1957 or 58. I have vague memory of him sitting in a chair in his house in Ashburton. I was scared of him, he was huge and old. He smiled and tried to befriend me, but I had none of it. As he died when I wsa young I have always regretted this. I wish he had lived longer and I had got to know him. From what I have learned of him, he was a great man. Nanna Wilson i knew so very well. We spent a lot of time with her as children and she came to our house in Mt Waverley every Tuesday, by train 4 stations from Darling station to Mt waverley when we were kids and did our family's ironing. When we were young she was there when we came home from school and later she left before we got home and always left a packet of fruit tingles for each of us on top of the fridge which we as kids looked forward to enormously when we came home from school. This went on for years as Elvie worked in her florist shop and was not at home when we came home. Later Nanna Wilson came to live with Elvie at Chamomomile Farm in 1973 so we knew her very well till she died in 1996 aged 99.

Elvie's brother Ted was married to Alma and they had two boys, Bruce and Colin, and later a daughter Rhonda a few years younger than me. Colin I think is is one year older than me. They lived in East Malvern, about ten minutes away from us at Mt Waverley by car, but the families had little to do with each other growing up in the 1950's and 60's. I think the boys were quite academic, Melbourne High school ? and Colin became a teacher. Bruce was called up for National Service in 1969 and did a term in Vietnam with the Transport Corps.

As cousins we have never had a close affinity nor much to do with each other. I may have seen them once or twice in forty years, perhaps at Ted or/ and Almas funeral some ten or more years ago. Ted and Alma visited us regularly at Chamomile Farm through the 80's and 90's and I got to know them better and liked them a lot. Ted was a tall man as was his father, as is Bruce. I missed that gene, which would have made me a ruckman.

I am pleased that Bruce has contacted. He has purchased a memorial tile from the RSL for our grandfather Edgar as a returned soldier of WW1, to commemorate the centenary of ANZAC next year, and wants us all to together at Edgar's grave in Box Hill to put the tile on Edgar's headstone. What a wonderful idea, and a graet way for the family to get together and restore ties after so many years of disassociation.

Well done Bruce, who didn't know my father Lyle had died 7 years ago till he read my blog. I apologized that I had not told him.

Photo Enquiry

An email came yesterday from Signpost Editor Jean saying a lady contacted her asking if she could have the photo of Keith and Barb Thomas that accompanied my article in the April edition. This lady is a long standing friend of Keith and Barb and she now lives in Ballarat but was sent the magazine by K+B's daughter.

Of course I was happy to oblige. I enjoy feed back from my Signpost writing most of which is positive but not always and one comment about my April Gembrook column was that it was "obviously done in a hurry and it didn't flow at all."

I'll post them here; I'm struggling to blog lately for one reason or another so this a way to do it despite my tiredness.

A Horse Tale With Twists

Keith Thomas went to Dandenong Market one Friday in 1975.

“I’d never owned a horse but always wanted to, so I bought one. We had a good back yard and there was a vacant block across the road, and paddocks nearby where we lived in Mt.Waverley, but buying the horse led to buying 32 acres at Avonsleigh.”

“I rode horses as a boy. They wandered around the Hartwell and Burwood Reserves, which were not far apart. I don’t know who owned them, if anybody. They were easy to catch and ride.”

Born in 1938 Keith attended Hartwell Primary School before Box Hill Tech. His first paid work was after school with a boot maker when he was ten years old. His job was to blacken the soles and shoes. His grandfather worked in a timber yard in South Melbourne and Keith worked there in school holidays.

“It was hard work. I was 12 years old but was expected to keep up with the men. I left school at 14 and started as an apprentice joiner at Burwood Timber Mills. I finished my apprenticeship with a staircase and shopfitter, and then I was self-employed doing mainly renovations.”

Keith did National Service in this period, and met his wife Barb at a church dance and they married in 1961. He joined Barb’s family’s business, Campbell and Heaps, which manufactured blinds and had a timber yard and hardware and steel interests. Keith started on the factory floor and finished up 15 years later as Production Operations Manager.

Keith and Barb moved to Avonsleigh with their girls Kerryn, Lisa and Joanne, along with the horse, ‘Carn’, short for ‘Come on’, and ten head of cattle. “As it turned out, Carn had crook legs and wasn’t much good so I sold him and bought other horses, the girls all had a horse. We were active members of the Macclesfield Pony Club and had happy times at working bees and events. We bred a few horses and broke them in.”

Keith commuted to a sign making firm in Melbourne for twelve months then became Victorian sales manager for a concrete underlay and plaster company before concentrating on breeding squab, eating pigeons, for Chinese restaurants in the main. The business grew to 1000 pairs till disaster struck in one swoop.

“We were wiped out overnight by poisoned birdfeed. It was a devastating loss. We won legal action, but finished up broke.”

They sold their Avonsleigh farm and bought 340 acres of bush at the end of Ure Rd at Gembrook in 1981, and rented a house in Emerald for a couple of years till they built. Keith was now a contractor tractor slashing for Melbourne Water around Melbourne, which he did for 6 or 7 years.

Before leaving Avonsleigh Barb had gone to the Newmarket Stock Sales and bought two semi-trailer loads of sheep from drought areas for 20 cents a head.

These were slowly transported to Gembrook where there was feed, but the flock was decimated by wild dogs which were numerous. Keith and Barb’s interest turned to cattle, firstly Hereford then Angus. Many years of hard work followed, fencing, clearing and improving pasture, always with problems of samba and fallow deer, wild dogs, wombats and feral humans.

Keith explains, “A 3km stretch of fence along the Bunyip State Park Boundary, five strands and electrified, I built three times. After the second time it was cut to small pieces and totally ruined I sat in the paddock and cried. We had equipment stolen from the tractor and dozer and dirt tipped in fuel tanks. Someone resented our work. The police did annual aerial searches of the property and the surrounding bush over the years and found a number of marijuana plantations, including a very large one of hundreds of mature plants.”

Keith was lucky to survive a heart attack in 2001, after which followed bypass surgery.

In 2002 while rounding up cattle, Barb was dragged under a rolling Land Cruiser tray truck. She was caught in the wheel rut lengthwise and it went right over her, including her head. It went up a rise and came back down, she got her head out of the way but it went across her this time. She suffered cracked ribs, punctured lungs, a fractured sternum, hip and collarbone, and spinal damage. Keith, finding her 15 minutes later, ran 300 metres to the house to phone the ambulance. He was so out of breath and when he took the phone from the wall and rang 000 he couldn’t speak. When he could the ambulance took 40 minutes to come.

“I had to dig Barb’s hearing aids from her ears with a pen knife. She was conscious, in agony. It was a terrible 40 minutes. The ambos called in the helicopter which took her to St Vincent’s.”

Keith and Barb sold their Gembrook property in 2008 and now live in Emerald where Keith keeps budgies, parrots and finches as a hobby and Barb is active at the Emerald Art Society. They have 8 grandchildren, and many memories to reflect on.

Keith and Barb Thomas

Gembrook Column - Written Word Works Wonders

The Signpost February edition included my profile of Emerald resident Stuart Mills who migrated from the UK in 1983. Editor Jean contacted me to say she’d had phone call from a lady at Caroline Springs who was excited to have located Stuart and left her phone number.

I rang the lady who explained that her father and mother had been in Australia staying with her for a month or so and her father attempted to find Stuart with whom he went to school. He knew Stuart lived in Emerald but had no contact details. Stuart wasn’t listed in the phone directory but he rang another ‘Mills’ thinking they might know him. They didn’t, but said they’d keep eyes and ears open, and took the Caroline Springs phone number in case.

The lady from the ‘Mills’ house in Emerald was reading Signpost soon after and there was the article on Stuart. Stuart and his old school friend had not seen each other for 55 years. Neither knew each other’s wife but on the day Stuart’s friend with his wife knocked on Stuart’s door, the wife said to Stuart’s wife Marlene, “My goodness, I know you.” The two ladies also, like their husbands, had not seen each other since childhood.

This feel good story on the power of print prompts me to ask readers of Signpost if they can give me information on Doug Twaits. Doug was an Emerald resident in the 1950’s after marrying Dot Fisher, sister of Dr Bottomley’s wife. Doug lived in Middle Park as a child, was Australasian featherweight champion wrestler before WW11 and served in Nth Africa, Greece and on Crete with the 2^nd 7^th AIF. He was three years in Stalag 383 as a POW. After moving from Emerald in the 1950's he returned in the 1980’s. He wrote a bird column for the Trader newspaper. He died in 2001 in a car accident aged 86.

I’m researching to produce a book on Doug’s life. Please leave your phone number with Signpost if you have information or anecdote.

I've had a lot of feedback re Doug Twaits and must get cracking on the biography that his widow Lynne has asked me to write. While looking for the above photo I came across one of me and Pip with her 'bucket' on recently so I conclude with that.