#UKriots: A personal timeline and call for some rationality.

The big news story at the moment, probably in some small part related to but currently eclipsing the global financial "whoops," is the little breakdown in law and order in the UK, where the world is now observing that America and Arab, African and poor countries have no monopoly on rioting and looting.

Human behaviour is never simple, and society is never a simple collection of humans. Perhaps more hopeful than the riots are depressing is the way there has been a flowering of community togetherness in the form of broom brigades and support, with twitter hashtags spawning off to help people coordinate help for the aged, disabled and infirm.

@debcha: Urban rioting existed before social media. You know what didn't? Large-scale community cleanups, organized within hours.

But inevitably there have been arguments over causes and responsibility and what the proper response is.

My own opinions here are informed by having worked with the under- and un-privileged and studying enough Psychology to be very, very cautious whenever anybody emphatically states a simple concept as an ultimate truth.

Ever since the rioting began I have been struck by how everybody has, once again, been talking at cross-purposes with broad, sweeping generalisations and, because I can't help myself, I have been getting increasingly annoyed by the lack of actual debate.

Early on Thursday evening I was inspired to spurt out this frustrated little ditty on Facebook, under the heading:

Riots: The difference between "excuse" and "explanation" is insight

Here is the the problem with the most basic, and common, reaction to rioting:

Saying "They don't have the right to smash up other people's stuff," or "Alienation is not an excuse," ignores the following:

1. People need to know they don't have the right to bash, smash or steal.
2. People need to care about that, and let it drive their behaviour.

From what I'm hearing, a lot of people feel there's an entire generation in the UK (since, oh, Margaret Thatcher was in power) who haven't been given a reason to know or care. This is a failing in society. It's not an excuse, it's not permission, it's not even a mitigating factor, but IT IS A FAILING IN SOCIETY.

It was a development of what I had said to close the previous depressing evening of being involved in the publication of depressing news:

I sometimes wonder what simple change in people's minds would produce the best, most wide-spread, positive change. Tonight I'm thinking it's the ability to understand the difference between "explanation" and "excuse", and start talking about appropriate responses to each.

Throughout the night, I keep up a running stream of tweets and FB updates as instant reactions occurred to me.

A rough timeline of my other efforts looks like this, oldest first (my apologies for not linking directly to individual tweets, mine or anyone else's: I can't work out how to get the link out of Twitter's website right now, useless pack of ----): 

1. If a society does not provide support to those who need it, it can not expect those people to support it.
2. The word "draconian" is leaping energetically and irresistibly to mind. #ABCnews24 #DavidCameron #ukriots
3. What depresses me the most about the world right now is not the economy or the riots in the UK. It's the government response to the #UKriots
4. Suddenly, I am beginning to see why Britain tends to produce dystopian SF like 1984 and V for Vendetta.
5. Someone tell David Cameron 1984 wasn't written as a manual, guide or handbook. #UKriots (retweeted four times, by complete strangers)
6. The country that produced V for Vendetta will use 1984 as a manual because it failed to realise the lessons in Lord of the Flies. #UKriots
7. It seems UK parliamentarians are proposing to respond to violence arising from extreme alienation and disenfranchisement by alienating people more and de-enfranchising them further.
8. Fuck humanity, bring on the genetically engineered apes.
9. The most effective law and order intervention I've ever heard of was an advocacy and support service, not extra laws or police. #UKriots

And among the tweets I retweeted, this:

RT @kim_harding: Norway 92 kids killed & they call for more democracy. London riots & the they call for a clamp down on human rights...

I also, flippantly but bitterly, said this:

I am disappointed I have not seen a Guy Fawkes mask on a rioter yet. Mind you, that would require an education ...

Which sparked a discussion including the point that access to education is one of the problems, wherein I clarified that:

What concerns me is problems seem to be arising long before "tertiary" education is even an issue. These people have given up hope before getting to high school.

Also:

Maybe if these youth had been given more youth workers and programs they might have produced the next batch of Alan Moores, Sex Pistols and Monty Pythons instead of several billion dollars of insurance bills and a clogged criminal justice system where courts are working 24 hours to clear the backlog.

No matter how critical is personal responsibility, and not matter how inexcusable it is to bash other people, rob them, damage and loot stores, any discussion needs to come back to: Why are people doing this? Why are they not stopping themselves? What bit of their brain is not stepping in to say "Hang on, that's not on"? What's the difference between the looters and the broom brigaders?

On Wednesday night on Lateline, lifelong Tottenham resident and youth worker Clasford Stirling (isn't that a great name?) said:

You know, and this tension has been going on for a very long time. So, to see the youths acting in that way was not a surprise to myself and some of the workers that work with young people.

And in the last eight months - a year to eight months, there's been this added pressure of services being cut, families - people in families losing their jobs, and just the whole pressure of society.

And I think it's all come to a head now, because the unemployment, especially in Tottenham, is absolutely horrendous for young people. And if you're a young person who has, for whatever reason, got yourself in trouble, you are not going to get a job.

...

Well, I'm glad [UK prime minister David Cameron] said that: that they think the world owes them something. Well, I'm telling you, David Cameron, that the world does owe them something.

These are young people. They want to work, they want to be educated - all these things that we have to do to make them better citizens. These things are being taken away bit by bit.

Please note, before accusing him of defending the indefensible, he also said:

I'm not for one saying that myself or anybody condones what a lot of them have done as regards to burning people's property and looting. And I think the people that I've spoken to in my community have echoed the words that I hope they're dealt with severely.

...

I think, yes, we do have to get tough with them. I don't agree with now that people like myself and other people's got to pay for all this damage. I think come down heavy on those looters that are caught, and even if it takes their whole life to pay back some of the money, that's what the Government should be looking at. Yes, come down tough.

Two ends of the issue: Give people an opportunity to become a "productive member of society", then be strict if they reject it. But who's going to be surprised if, not given an opportunity to do good, they do bad?

Then, a different perspective, from sociologist Professor Ellis Cashmore on Lateline Thursday night:

I would actually call it cannibalism more than [rioting] ...

...

I really do think that this is commodity-driven kind of phenomenon at the moment. I stress again: it is not rioting. It's young people eating up their own neighbourhoods.

It disappointed me, I have to say, that Lateline host Tony Jones didn't ask a sociologist why social behaviour was breaking down, what was enabling this - particularly as Tony had interviewed Clasford Stirling just the night before.

However these two perspectives really do highlight what for me, as you may have gathered if you've actually been reading all the way down, is the issue:

People are cannibalising their own neighbourhoods, beating their neighbours, and even telling people "This is my banker's bonus!"

Why are they not not doing this? Anything can spark a demonstration, particularly among the bored and the angry, but what sort of absence of moral opinion or presence of huge resentment has lead to this? 

Let me be very clear: I have worked with the unprivileged and the angry, the mental health patients with nothing and the drug addicts with self-induced mental health conditions, and we saw negative behaviours and we tolerated none of it. We understood, we identified the sources of their frustrations and, from outside unable to help, shared many of them, but we tolerated none of it on our neutral territory.

If I come across as ignoring the criminality in the search for an explanation, it's because I was feeling overwhelmed by the anger and by kneejerk reactions. The behaviour I have seen sickens me and my first reaction is to lock the lot of them up. I just don't think it would do anyone any good at all - not the looters, not the UK taxpayers, not UK society.

So don't go shouting you can't excuse this behaviour by looking for any explanation beyond David Cameron's crashingly bone-headed "pure criminality": We're not trying to.

Clasford Stirling, not the best public speaker, not the most coherent or the most considered, talked about a struggle to provide young people with any sense of hope and future at all. Professor Cashmore waved away suggestions of real poverty by talking about the welfare state, but try telling that to someone who find themselves unemployable and needs food stamps to survive while all around billboards advertise nice cars driven by the well-dressed to the Michelin-starred restaurants.

It's all very well pointing out the inanely obvious "They have to help themselves up!" but they need, at the very least, a fucking ladder.

Dysfunctional health system: Break the law, go to hospital

I have commented before in this blog about the fact that, although I am cautiously against the death penalty, I find the way it is implemented to be balmy and generally offensive.

But there is one thing that is just ridiculous.

Item, overheard from somebody else's TV: mass murderer in Africa, HIV positive, gets full medical care and anti-retro-viral drugs while in prison. His wife and child, not in prison, get nothing and can't afford it.

Can anyone explain to me how exactly this, in any way, makes sense?

My opinions on the death penalty come down to this:

1. Make it the penalty of last resort.
2. Throw all your effort into ensuring that the case is water-tight, and set the standard for the death penalty high.
3. Care for the prisoner as you would any other, until the penalty is carried out.
4. Do it as soon after the trial, and all permissible appeals, as possible.

To this I would like to add:

Prisoners get the same medical care that is available to all members of society, no more, no less.

If you have universal health cover, such as Australia, then give them that cover. If you have a user-pays system, such as the laughably named United States of America, then put in place a health care economy inside the prison. Provide health cover as you would an employment contract, perhaps: They obey the rules, they participate in all prison tasks, they work if required to work, and they get a representative style of health cover.

If your country doesn't have any employment-related health cover either: Well, then, why is your prison system making itself such an attractive destination for the down-and-out and the sick?

That is, surely, all that you are doing. When somebody has hit rock bottom, guaranteed accommodation, food and medical care starts to look pretty good.

My views on universal, "socialised" medicine (notice which terms get used in countries where "socialism" is a dirty word?) are that it is a primary function of society to provide care for its members, and that must include medical care, which improves quality of life, productivity, and the crime rate.

So my opinion on prisoners getting free medical care in prison is the same as my opinion on your average man, woman, child or indeterminate individual on the street getting free medical care: Yes.

My opinion on a state which denies care to good, decent, well-behaved law-abiding citizens while providing it to the worst of the worst of offenders, is: What the fuck have you been smoking?

I'd like to think that the Church had a limited life expectancy, instead.

Now, this makes me really angry.

Church contests age expectancy of brain injured Myles Hill (Courier Mail)

That's not a very helpful headline, so let me give you the synopsis:

Myles Hill, now 17, suffered a serious brain injury while boogie-boarding at the Southport School in 2003. The Anglican Church, who I can only assume are responsible for the school, are denying culpability, pointing the finger of blame at so many other parties that one wonders if they're trying to snowball the court into submission.

I mean it, it really is ridiculous.

But, and here is the point that makes me see red, they are trying to limit the amount of damages claims by claiming that he won't live for very much longer.

To remind you: I have worked with brain injury. I dealt, day in and day out, with families who are facing inadequate care because they can't afford it, because the compensation funds ran out early. I have been at large meetings where services from different branches of public and private, health and disability and law and insurance, all agreed that a major problem with compensation payouts is that people with brain injury live longer than courts expect.

In fact, Disability Services Queensland have identified this issue, and the resultant need for publicly funded services, as a crucial one that needs to be addressed. Papers discussing PhD research on this issue are available from the Articles section of Gitana Consulting's website.

So, the fact that a Church, a pack of hypocritical bastards who have the gall to go on records as saying:

""While we respect the legal mechanism and the process, the church's focus is one of compassion and pastoral care," he said. "Our prayers and thoughts remain with Myles and his family.""

The fact that this church is pointing the finger of blame at everyone else and accusing the family of not being able to care for Myles, is saying "Oh, he's not going to live for very long, so the enormous emotional trauma you've already suffered and the added trauma of us telling you this is irrelevant, really, because someone with really high medical care needs isn't going to live long enough to need help", that is a candidate for a Scumbag Of The Year award.

It must be so easy to be religious, and claim that merely thinking happy thoughts instead of actually doing anything discharges all responsibilities, duties of care, and expectations of compassion. Useless pricks, the lot of them, living like a bloated appendix on the rest of society.

The idiocy that is Centrelink

This is going to be an ongoing series, you see if it doesn't.

Centrelink, as the Australian Federal Government agency which administers a range of services and programs that fall under the banner of "social services" has a nightmare on its hands trying to make them all work together, and deal with a population of clients who are more likely than most of the population to be stressed, frayed, frazzled, and with various medical, psychiatric and drug-related issues.

But that doesn't excuse the more ludicrous and blatantly unfair aspects of Centrelink policies and processes. And if they get handed down from the Government Departments responsible for the payments - DEEWR, say - I don't care. I'm still going to blame Centrelink.

This, then, is a nascent list of the Things That Are Wrong:

• If you earn money while on a Centrelink payment, you lose a portion of that payment. Fair enough - this is intended to be a needs-based system. If your partner earns money, you lose payment, which is fair enough if you live together and share expenses. The problem is that while you are told exactly, to the cent, what you're allowed to earn, and how much you lose, across several thresholds, they don't publish the same information on your partner's income. Nada. You don't know how much they're allowed to earn before you start losing money, and you don't know how fast it happens. The only justification I can think is that they're concerned that people may turn down work because it will impact upon their partner's payment which is, of course, exactly what happens anyway.
• If you receive Ausstudy, which allows you to complete further schooling without having to work to support yourself at the same time (theoretically - just try it) you don't automatically qualify for a Health Care Card. WTF? An HCC gives you a range of discounts on things like public transport. So does a Student Card, okay. But that's hardly an excuse. An HCC gives you very cheap prescription drugs. A Student Card doesn't. Let's look at some of the conditions that don't incapacitate you from studying, aren't uncommon among younger people, and which are relieved or controlled by prescription medications: Diabetes. Asthma. Chronic pain (resulting from accidents, arthritis - quite possible while young, etc.) Various psychiatric conditions. Once-off bacterial or yeast infections. My partner finds that the contraceptive pill controls migraines which would otherwise cripple her a couple of times a month. If you have to pay $16 (minimum!) rather than ~$4 per script, it starts to add up a bit.
  
• Ausstudy recipients have only been eligible for rent assistance for about a year now. I'm not giving them credit for fixing that - it wasn't bloody good enough. Students sometimes have to live away from home due to distance (there's an extra allowance - which is pitiful) or due to family problems. I knew a girl who made social workers cry every time she had to justify her living-away-from-home status. She shouldn't have needed to.
• If you are on a Disability Support Pension, or are eligible for one but need to (re)prove it through medical reports, you will probably need to make several medical appointments in order to have the relevant professionals fill out the relevant paperwork. Some of this paperwork (yes, I've handled it during a previous life) advises you that you may, due to the time necessary (for a form), need to make a double appointment, and that this, regretably, cannot be claimed on Medicare. Not. Bloody. Good. Enough.
• You are expected to declare income earned up to the day you declare it, each fortnight. How the hell am I supposed to know? Unless, and sometimes not even then, you are on a cash-in-hand job or a regular but low-paying job and have already received your first pay-check, you don't. My partner works strange agency nursing hours and, although she has the pay rates for each time of the day and week, we can never work out exactly what she earns. I have just started a job with three different components, paid at different rates, dependent upon the time of day or week. Can I work it out? Can I hell! (And repeated requests to pay-roll have not resulted in an email containing details of just what those pay rates actually are, but that's a separate whinge).
• The other part of this is that while Centrelink pays you the evening of the day you put your form in, no other organisation that doesn't pay by cash, does. In my case, I have to wait 10 whole freaking days from the end of my pay period, to receiving income. Which means that I can, theoretically, be penalised on my Centrelink payment two weeks before I receive the income I just got penalised for. This does not bode well for things like, ooh, I don't know, rent.
  
• You declare income pre-tax. All of which, including the part you don't get because the government takes it, affects your Centrelink income. How is that fair? How does that encourage honesty?
  
• For some payments, you have to submit fortnightly forms in person. Which means travel, which is an expense that is most emphatically not directly related to job searching, and is also time out of your day (considerable amounts, when travel is added to the time spent standing in line) where you are not searching for jobs. Or, whatever.
• If you sign a contract for a permanent, full-time job that pays several thousand a week but which, unfortunately, doesn't start for four weeks and you won't get your first pay for another two weeks after that, which means six weeks from now... Centrelink can't cope. You need to live, so you need money, so you need the Centrelink income. But, on Newstart, you need to look for (doesn't necessarily mean apply for, which is something) ten jobs per fortnight. Which can theoretically mean that you have to turn down interviews and waste hundreds of hours because "Well, I've actually got a job, I just have to go through these hoops so that I don't get evicted and starve to death before it starts." There needs to be something in place here. In my case, I couldn't get paid for the shifts I did before Christmas because the HR department were on holiday and didn't create a payroll identity for me, so I lost Centrelink payment for income declared then, and that was a fortnight ago and I won't actually receive the money I worked for until this time next week!
  
• Each office has different arrangements for whether they take appointments pre-booked or walk-in for assessment interviews, which does not help.

Further suggestions welcomed.

Queensland needs regulated at-fault driver personal injury insurance

Sorry for the serious title, but this is a serious issue.

I work, and despite trying to wriggle out of it, still work, in the community sector and in brain injury.

I am currently, as a result of a report I am writing for job no. 2, skimming through the add-on at-fault driver protection schemes that most of Queensland's licensed Compulsory Third Party (CTP) insurers include with their CTP schemes as an incentive to get more customers.

CTP is automatically attached to vehicle registration, and it covers personal injury, up to and including permanent disability or death. As the medical expenses alone could run over a million dollars for a serious accident, this is a good thing, no matter how much it stings to have to pay half of your registration as compulsory insurance.

The thing is, Queensland (and most of the other states in Australia) have an at-fault scheme - if you were judged to have caused the accident which maimed you, you can fucking well pay your own medical and rehabilitation or care costs.

Which has resulted in the most extraordinary drain on the publicly funded disability support system, and far too many cases of family breakdown as families try to cope with long-term disability resulting from drunken street-racing or simple lapse of concentration.

Which is why the CTP insurers tack-on an at-fault cover, with payouts ranging from laughably inadequate to just about reasonable.

But they all limit themselves to physical, sensory or spinal cord injury. They specifically exclude, all of them, psychiatric illness or psychological disorders. And none of them even make any mention, exclusionary or otherwise, of brain injury. This is the bit that ticks me off. In the Civil Liability Regulation (Qld) 2003, Schedule 4 lists each category of injury covered by regulated, at-fault, CTP. And not only does it list brain injury, it lists Extreme, Serious, Moderate and Minor brain injury. Ditto for mental disorder.

What's going on here? Are they drawing an arbitrary line in the sand to cut costs? Are they counting on community ignorance of the appalling, debilitating effects of brain injury and quietly ignoring the issue? Or is brain injury, with its potential to demand lifetime care costs that make simple quadriplegia pale into insignificance, such a huge cost that they're running scared?

For added hypocrisy value, Suncorp Metway Insurance are a commercial partner of YoungCare, a new and very high-profile provider of 5-star (I'm not joking) age-appropriate (well, kind of) long-term high-care accommodation for young people with brain injury and other debilitating conditions. YoungCare advertised strongly on the brain injury issue. Suncorp appear to be refusing to acknowledge their client group.

Shame, Suncorp, shame, and shame on the rest of you as well.

Dear Officer Krupke, it ain't my fault

There is a basic principle (I'm not sure of what, perhaps science, perhaps just plain logic - let's call it philosophy) stating something along the lines of "Don't stop at the first thought." This can take several forms - "Never assume only one cause of damage" may be useful to forensic anthropologists (thank you Kathy Reichs for pointing that one out). The basic principle, however, remains sound in all areas of life. We can even paraphrase it as "Don't jump to conclusions".

Which leads me to this headline, from the ABC: New NT laws will see 'more Aboriginal people jailed'. Huh? A classic example of a headline which says just barely enough to force you to read the article in order to find out what the freck they're talking about. It's rather good, actually.

What it is about which they are talking, turns out to be mandatory sentencing laws. I hear echoes of a different racial complaint from New York... The gist of the story is that new laws are being proposed which would lead to mandatory jail time for anyone who commits a violent assault. The president of the Australian Council of Civil Liberties, one Terry O'Gorman (who seems to have been president for quite some time, if my recollections of his name are anything to go by) complains that this will result in more Aboriginal people being jailed.

Yes... So?

Let's take this statement in the spirit in which it appears to have been meant: As a bad thing. Let's look at the basic facts:

1. The laws will jail people who commit violent offences.
2. All arguments about the uselessness of jail as a reform tool aside, this is at least an internally consistent idea that holds together under shallow scrutiny.
3. Evidence would, we assume, suggest that if Terry can claim that more Aboriginal people would be jailed, then more Aboriginal people currently commit violent offences.
4. Terry O'Gorman's response to this is to complain about a law which seems to have something to do with public safety.

May I suggest that Terry O'Gorman do something useful and start talking about the cultural, social and economic environment which contributes to Aboriginal people being higher perpetrators of acts which society tends to find repugnant?

May I further suggest that this more than a little to do with the environment of touchy hostility on the one side and panicky fear on the other which sees hell raised when sexually abused children are removed from their community because this is "like another stolen generation" (No, it isn't) and sees people pilloried when they say things like "let's not give special dispensations to members of society based upon race, let's give everyone the same help based upon need".

May I, in closing, suggest that this country isn't going to be able to do anything useful for remote and crumbling communities any time soon until we drop the whole automatic guilt thing and start having a sensible debate starting from scratch, here and now, and beating people with the cluestick whenever they complain about past injustices unless they can guide the present debate by illustrating what hasn't worked or explaining why we're were we're at?

Link to ABC Online article.
Link to explain the title.

Hey, where the hell did that heart-warming moment come from?

I have a confession to make.

I'm sick.

I like politically incorrect jokes (that are funny - most of them actually aren't), I like comic strips in the tradition on Far Side, and heartwarming stories of people overcoming adversity by playing with the normal children make me want to vomit (I know, I made a great career choice getting into disability services, didn't I?). Oh yes, and: If you use the spelling disAbility or the phrase "differently abled" or even "taking the dis out of disability" in my presence, don't be surprised if I scream apoplectically and launch myself at your throat.

So this morning I'm slowly going through the archives of sick and twisted Internet comic strip Killer Spoons (contains fecal humour and abortion jokes) when I stumble across what may be the only actually good "disabled getting out there" example I've seen all year: Speed Wheeler.

That kid needs one of these.

P.S.: I wonder how much of the Paralympics will get televised this year?

Link to strip Speed Wheeler.
Link to ParaPros Racing (check out the gallery, then practice saying "Gnarly, dude!" until you stop feeling self-conscious about it.)

We don't actually want to reduce drug dependency, do we?

This boggles the mind. Let's review the background:

• Heroin is illegal, highly addictive, funds a lot of organised crime and can really fuck up your life.
• Methadone is a legal drug replacement "weaning-off" therapy which is reasonably successful.
• Heroin addicts are unlikely to be able to able to afford methadone.
• Therefore, the government subsidises the treatment.

At this point, anybody who has any idea at all on how my mind works is wondering what the "but" is.

Here it is:

• Pharmacies are charging a $60 dispensing fee, so addicts can't afford the treatment, so they end up back on heroin, on the streets, committing multiple acts of petty crime to fund it, because the government subsidises the drug but not the pharmacy's fees.

You can't tell me that we're really trying to cut down on illegal drug usage. I just won't believe you.

ABC News story here.

Save souls == scar emotionally for life

"Repeatedly threatening children with brutal torture in the form of eternal damnation is psychological child abuse, and has extremely negative, long-term effects on their mental health. It's bullying, it's disgusting, and we need to put a stop to it." Stop the Nightmares: petition to stop religious bullying in the UK.

What would it take to get this for Australia? Please?

It's very simple, really: There are laws governing public order and child abuse, and religious groups and individuals are frequently allowed to bypass or side-step these laws purely because they claim special status for being religious. The logic in this crumbles like a communion wafer when the government involved has a consitutional separation of church and state, and allows multiple religions, each of which conflict with the others, to do the same thing.

Behave decently, and demonstrate your evidence, or shut up. A heritage and a repeatedly translated and edited book, or even one which can still be read by millions of believers in its original language, do not exempt you from abuse laws and do not allow you to tell little kids that they'll experience torments for all eternity if they don't parrot the party line.

Maybe Soylent Green really is the way to go

I'm a bit confused by people's reaction to Kevin Rudd. He seems to attract a lot of negativity that people haven't really explained to me. I tried to get it out of one person, but she was highly drunk and spent so long saying "I may just not understand this" every other sentence that all I got out was a bitch about house prices, and I didn't have time to ask the fundamental question "How is this Rudd's fault? He's been in office how long?"

I'm more concerned by his overt Christianity, frankly, but his record on things like RU486 and stem cell research is, although mixed, promising. What gets him massive kudos points for me is something that should never have been necessary, should never have been at question, should never even have been considered in the 20th Century.

Spike Milligan once wrote a letter to a Christian overseas aid organisation, and it is reproduced in his book of letters, which is well worth reading, in which he says, essentially, "I respect the work you do, and I encourage it, but I cannot support it until you change your policy on the single biggest means of helping these countries, which is birth control." Think about it: The last thing you want in a country with not enough food, not enough clean water, housing, medical supplies or professionals, or anything else, is a glut of more people.

I hadn't realised that those draconian, reactionary, 1950s-pining wing-nuts in the previous administration had passed a law stating that Australian overseas aid funds could not be used to aid abortions. Why not refuse to give food to childless couples or singles? Why not just demand that single parents marry before they can receive medical care? What's the betting that no account is taken of pregnancies resulting from rapes, or of pregnancies that threaten the health of the mother?

It was high time we had a change of government in this country. Good luck to Rudd, I say. Which Howard government ministers running the opposition at the moment, I wouldn't trust them to run a compassionate cake stall.

Well done, Centrelink

Question M1, on page 30 of the Claim for payments for people with disabilities, illnesses or injuries is "Are you permanently blind?"

Spot the irony.

Even worse is question M2: "Did someone help you complete this form?"

Is this some sort of test? Yes, I'm blind. No, nobody helped me. I'm psychic.

Mua'Dib might be able to fill out a written form using the amazing precognitive powers granted by the geriatric spice, melange, but I'm pretty sure that anybody on this world who was permanently blind, as opposed to merely being very, very badly vision impaired, would have difficulty.

And by the way, does anybody else think that being able to fill out a two-column-per-page form that is 32 pages long could be perceived as seriously calling into doubt your inability to undertake 15 hours of work or study each week? You'd have to do it in installments. Day 1: Lodge intent to claim. Day 2: Pages 1-10. Day 3: Pages 11-20, with a break in the middle...

A word about that Scarlet 'A' on the left.

It's the certified Richard Dawkins label of Say It Loud, Say It Proud Atheism.

For those who are reading this in a feed reader and can't see it, here it is again:

Now, my attitude towards protestations of atheism is similar to that expressed by Douglas Adams (I hope I'm not misinterpreting him here) who, in an interview with American Atheist magazine, answered several questions in a baffled sort of way with answers along the lines of "That question isn't really relevant... It's just not important in England. Maybe it's because I only know atheists, but it's just not something that people care about..." In addition, although I have deeply negative thoughts about the brain-washing, progress-denying, crusade-promoting, deeply sexist and anti-thought organised religions we're expected to subsidise and share our society with, I really couldn't care about someone's personal beliefs or sense of spiritualism provided they don't cross the line into trying to make me care, through personal interaction or public policy.

Unfortunately, like Richard Dawkins I have been confronted with so much religion-sponsored idiocy that it's really starting to piss me off and I return to the violent rejection of religion that I used to entertain, then grew out of, then began pondering again, and now can't seem to be able to avoid.

I am therefore, despite hating the idea that it should be necessary for atheists - a group which should be identified only by not belonging to a group - to identify themselves, letting visitors to this blog know that I believe in critical thought and not the tooth fairy.

Pack of bastards

Couple convicted for neglect of dogs. (ABC News Online)

Without knowing anything more about the circumstances, what are the odds that this couple of scumbags defend themselves by saying (cue belligerent tone) that they were looking after the dogs, and weren't doing anything wrong, and it's all the fault of some neighbour who doesn't like dogs and complained about the noise?

Please note that the article, as extraordinarily short as it is, mentions 100 dogs kept in fenced compounds, and "malnourished, with mange, eye ulcers and open sores".

Rot in hell.

The year is what, exactly?

I have just started work at a new organisation, and have therefore been thrust whimpering and fearful back into the world of Windows Desktops. The XP is not so bad - if all you want to do is research and write, it's serviceable if showing its age. No, sorry, scratch that. It is bad.

Then there's Internet Explorer. In 2008, there should be a law against forcing people to use IE6. No tabs, crude bookmarks management that they insist upon labelling "Favorites" with a blatant disregard for truth or international spelling, and a general impression of being out of step, behind the times and, fundamentally, Not Good Enough.

Install Firefox? No. I don't have Administrator privileges, it seems. They don't trust me. And because the IT person is not in the same building, I'll bide my time before asking her about it. Not having administrator privileges also means that I can't install the Google toolbar. Or do anything else that might be halfway useful. It's like being stuck in the Wayback Machine.

And then there's Windows itself. Alt-M to minimise the current window: Not available. Bulk renamer within Windows Explorer: Not available. The taste of impending doom? All too present.

But, intriguingly, when turning off I was given the option of "Install updates and then shut down." There was one update after the first day, 93 the second. I wonder what I'll come back to the next time I turn it on? A web browser which looks like one?

From the den of the beast.

There are several problems with open-plan offices, and I'm not even going to mention noise pollution. These are my favourites:

• In an office of a major national government department, it makes any attempt at protection of privacy data a bit of a pathetic joke, really.
• Everyone who is standing in a queue that is slowly growing to stretch from the line in the carpet towards the door, entangling with the other queue and threatening to head outside, can see you when you stand and yack with your colleagues instead of talking on the phone or even trying to fake work by pointing at a computer screen.

Stop complaining about people hating you if that's the best customer support you can come up with.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is a loon. (Updated)

The Archbishop of Canterbury, despite lacking a title with quite the same self-assured arrogant sense of authority, is the Anglican equivalent of the pope.

I seem to recall that he's been in the news a fair bit lately, but I can't recall why. So I can't really pass judgment on the basis of accumulated evidence. I am, however, quite prepared to pass judgment based upon this:

Sharia law 'unavoidable' in UK: Archbishop (ABC News Online)

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!

What the hell is happening to the UK? I don't mean terrorist activities, I mean daily life. I have mentioned in these pages before the lunacy of allowing islamic medical students to not touch female bodies. Now the nation's top religious authority is saying that another religion should be allowed to introduce their own legal system?

I'm not convinced (to put it nicely) that allowing separated enclaves of aboriginal Australians to maintain tribal law is a good idea or even working, but this is lunacy. Which bits of sharia law, and who gets to decide? If imams argued that a Muslim man in Britain should be allowed to marry multiple 13 year old girls because the prophet did that, which legal system would you involve? Complaining about that would mean meddling in that culture's legal system, and you have allowed them to maintain aspects of their legal system because that's their culture!

I have been, over the years, steadily losing faith in the whole concept of multiculturalism, and no longer have any time for it. Australia has pockets of ethnicity where first- or second-generation Australians don't fit in with their anglo-saxon peers because their parents have maintained "tradition!" and wouldn't even fit in if they went back to "the motherland" because their little enclave of "culture" reactively froze itself, and the motherland did not. Recent Dutch moves requiring all prospective immigrants to view material that they might find offensive, in order to demonstrate that they can live in the culture to which they are moving, make more sense than ever.

There was an episode of the Indian-English sketch comedy show Goodness Gracious Me where a battered Indian wife went to a female refuge only to have the social worker exhort her to return to her cultural roots and accept her heritage, while the wife is standing there in disbelief saying "He's hitting me!" I laughed, sarcastically, at that sketch. Now I think I might just curl up behind the sofa.

There is "culture" which is specific to the nation and to individual units within that nation, including ethnic groups and religious groups, various combinations of both, and a bewildering array of classifications of mostly "youfs".

Then there is "law" which is decided by (if you're lucky) a representative parliament. There are already social responses open to people who believe that the law has failed them, and many of them are even legal. But there are many instances where the nation, if it is to not become a farce, has to make a moral, ethical and ultimately legal decision. Removing children from situations of sexual abuse is not racist. Enforcing local laws onto a cultural sub-group who emigrated to that locality is not racist or religiously intolerant. If customs fit within the law, so be it. If customs are allowed to become law because there are points of disagreement, why have the fucking law in the first place?

If the Archbishop of Canterbury comes out any time soon and declares that it should be illegal for Anglicans to divorce, don't say I didn't warn you.

Edit: The really, really sad part about this is that I find myself agreeing with that prat Brendan Nelson.

Why are we only warned about L and P drivers?

Here's an idea, courtesy of my partner:

Traffic police will be issued with paintball pistols, and a range of coloured balls. When they see anybody blatantly breaking any road rule other than speed - not indicating, tail-gating or sitting in the right-hand lane at under the speed limit are favourites, here - they get to shoot the car. Ideally, this paint can only be removed with proprietary solvents available at transport department offices, after you've paid the fine.

This will not only allow traffic cops to make many more bookings of dangerous drivers, but will, until the paint has been washed off, warn everyone else that here is someone who is not to be trusted.

And here's another idea: There are already special parking spots for the disabled (this I support) and parents with prams (why? Why do people who choose to breed get given dispensations because they have decided to inconvenience themselves?) and there is motorcycle parking available in many areas, which saves a lot of parking space. How about we set aside special parks for 4WDs, well over the back of the carpark away from everything, as they are clearly outdoorsy people who won't mind the walk, and this way they don't mix with people who won't be able to see what's coming when they try and pull out of their park?

User see, user click

Message to all website developers: People are trained, by a long indoctrination on Windows, Macs old or new, Amiga, BeOS, OS/2, Solaris, Irix and numerous *nix interfaces, to click on icons. Pretty pictures are buttons, and buttons do something when you hit them.

So when you are designing your website, it's okay to do this:

"Label: URL"

It's okay to do this:

"Link that describes itself"

It is not okay to put in an icon and then not make it part of the link. If you have a pretty picture, users will expect it to do something. Vodafone are hideously guilty of this, and they have no excuse for not knowing better. InfoXchange Australia are guilty of this (and sparked off this outlet for simmering resentment) and perhaps could be excused, being a welfare organisation, except that they're an Internet clearing house of information, and really should be hiring website designers who know better.

Cue Graham Garden voice: "Get it right!"

Please make sure your answers use scripture, not logic

This is actually really scary.

You can make all the jokes you like about fundamentalist Christians, and flat-earthers, and red-neck, white-trash hicks from the caravan park, but the truly scary thing is that they're not all trailor trash, some of them can string coherent sentences together and they have raised self-blinding ignorance and targeted idiocy to an artform that would be fascinating to watch if it weren't for the blood-curdling thought that they're really out there!

The great mobile phone mass-suicide of '08

I have just had to speak to Vodafone customer support. Their ditzy-cheerful bubble-gum-girl voice and voice-recognition only system is deeply, profoundly, morbidly depressing and left me in the wrong mood or mental state to deal with someone who was speaking English as a second language and didn't know quite entirely what it was I was asking about.

Any more of that and I may be forced to move to a competing service provider.