Screwing the Murray / Darling Basin Plan.

In light of the current concern about water rights in the Murray Darling Basin, I would like to offer this piece I wrote on our old community blog about the “perfect storm” existing amongst the smaller “generational farms” along this section where I live on the River. The cause of this concern is because of the creation of mega “Agricorp managed investment schemes” that have sprung up using irrigation to grow huge crops of veggies and nuts and fruits, and now a new player of entrepreneurial-speculators without land or farming business buying and selling water licences solely for a profit.

Many of you would remember the collapse of “Great Southern” and “Timbercorp”, two mega Hedge-Fund / Managed Investment Schemes that bought up huge amounts of water licences along the Murray River. These and other schemes have dominated the water market and by sheer weight of numbers, have corrupted the cycle of produce markets and pricing…and have bumped up the cost of water for irrigation..

Read on…

Community Centralised Markets.

Discussion Paper on Solutions for Sustainability of a Community.

Listing the realities of farming in the Mid-Murray Council area..:

a) That it is primarily an agricultural constituent…

b) That the agriculture producers are mostly of generational owned small holdings..

c) The imposts of market requirements, restrictions and pricing are more favoured to large holdings, large corporate agri-business and Managed Investment Scheme producers……

The result being the development of a “perfect storm” of squeezed “family farms”, concentration of production to “outside interests” that export their produce, dumped excess commodities resulting in rock-bottom prices for produce and concentration of water allocation licences with corporate agri-business. The result could be a complete loss to the local community of independence in growth and supply of produce from family farming enterprises.

Many might say..: “So what!..let the market decide.”…But it isn’t “the market” deciding…it’s “Fund – Managed” corporations and speculators with super capital, super credit and cross-border / cross-seasonal guarantees of profit margins protected against crop-failure by multi-location producers that, being so large and having the capacity to produce so much, they can control the wholesale price of produce by dumping or withdrawing commodities or water from a market that will eventually be reliant on their capacity….The smaller producer having neither the capacity, flexibility, nor the credit to “ride-out” long-term problems…add to the mix an uncertain climate, and we have that perfect storm mentioned above.

The conundrum facing those many small farmers, is that having only a certain acreage, they can only grow a set amount of produce per acre..there are only so many onions that can be grown in every squ. metre, for instance..and because of their limited collateral with the small acreage, and their incapacity to compete with these mega farms, they are not well received by the banks who already are aware of their asset and growth capacity. So they are locked into a vicious cycle of not having enough land or ready capital to buy water to compete with the agricorp output. They then cannot compete with the wholesale price per kilo of produce marketed by the mega farms and they cannot get credit from a secure source to expand their acreage, nor afford to buy any more water licences for irrigation..a perfect storm.

I spoke to one young couple in such a situation where they lamented borrowing  money just to get their goods to market, which only returned a fraction of the expected price, leaving them to say they would have been better off if they had let the crop rot in the ground…THIS is where the bad management of the Murray-Darling Basin has brought us to.

See this : http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2016-03-13/senate-report-mis-agribusiness-calls-for-protection-for-investor/7242216

http://www.cpa.org.au/guardian/2009/1413/05-great-southern.html

https://www.intelligentinvestor.com.au/hi-guys-was-just-wondering-if-you-had-taken-timbercorps-water-licences-into-your-per-share-valuation

What can we do?

Those mega-producers deliver their products either interstate or ship to ports for export way outside this council area…so they are not affected by local fluctuations, yet do have capacity to affect the viability of local produce with the flow-on pricing control from their mega production capacity that services the mega shopping-centre sellers like Coles and Woolies or IGA etc…..it is the smaller, family owned farms that are at risk and perhaps we can do something there. It is a new idea, building NOT on a cooperative of producers, though they would be good…it is a “market-oriented” proposal that would require a contract between individual parties..no different than the usual “contract to supply” of many businesses…it would require the Mid-Murray Council to become an “investor in the constituency” to supply locations and under-cover premises where a regular, consistent, semi-permanent stalls (much like the Adelaide Central Market) of local farmers could sell a huge variety of produce to local shoppers….produce such as vegetables, meats and fruit and even cereal grains in either bulk or packaged. Or ..there could be an emphasis on wholesale selling to many local country stores that would save transport time and costs for all parties while delivering fresh produce to local buyers on a more regular basis.

Certainly, it is a bit of a BBQ. stopper….I believe we have the capability to do this… we have to think big…very big! We have quality growers of everything in the lines of veggies’ , meats, fruits and cereals…do we have the population of consumers to purchase? The population count of the SA. Riverland area alone could add up to at least thirty or forty thousand people.. not all of them will shop at such a market, but ALL of them do eat!…If these “centralised” markets stayed open for say.. three consecutive days each, I would think they would be a goer…considering also the weekend tourist flows through the area..if council could obtain State or Federal monies to construct multi-purpose under-cover arenas with appropriate cold-store facilities…then it could be a goer…There would have to be at least four locations all operating simultaneously over three days, perhaps..one in Morgan, one in Blanchetown, one in Sedan and the other in Mannum….the multi-purpose arenas could be hired out on other days for other pursuits.

Sure, this is a simplistic over-view of possibilities of de-centralising produce supply buying, that would involve cooperation and contractual certainties between council, growers and a willing-to-participate public….but what other choice is there? Just lay back and watch as all these hard-working, quality producing generational farms and families get squeezed out of the industry?… or do we affiliate and come together as a society and instead of ending up with a community that is depreciating and all our young people want to move away from, we become a community that is creating and not only do we get our young people to stay, but we attract more keen people to come to the area because they want to be a part of a growing community.

What do you think?

“Welcome to our Alpha-Male World”.

The recent sad legal case of Amber Harrison and Channel Seven gives rise to the attention of just what are the risks played when an unsuspecting woman wanders by accident or innocence into the realms of a “boys own” network…There is another current case, I believe, involving the AFL and several married men and one male of the “Brotherhood”…whatever that is!

Whatever the masculine scenario, whatever the antiquity or the integrity, be it class or crass, there is usually but one outcome when the female of the species moves her swishing skirts, hips and general distraction of nature’s natural pheromone aphrodisiac into the range of Alpha-male radar…..trouble.

There has been great debate over the ages that in Da Vinci’s mural of “The Last Supper”, there is near Jesus the presence of a woman..this “affront” to the male bastion of a gathering of the Apostles has simmered down through the ages..as if such a creature would dare to invade the private club of male testosterone…outrageous!..it’d be like a tranny doing strip-tease at the Crazy-Horse Review…unthinkable!

I recall just such a group that gathered at the south-east corner of the old Seacliff hotel to once a week on a Friday, to give salubrious homage to that most liberating of spirits; The Amber Fluid..But this one night, all went horribly wrong..It went like this:

Nan.:

Getting back to that “Last Supper” thingo…you notice (as have many others) one of the “Apostles” looks remarkably like a woman…well, that’s because she is!…It’s no secret that whenever a group of “alpha-males” gather, there is always one token female allowed into the group. She is there playing the role of the “straight- man” for their confabulations (yes..I looked THAT up…)….for their double-entendres, when they say a sexist or vulgar comment and it’s …”present company excepted…” or…”If,’n you’ll pardon my language”….or ” in the company of a lady…” this generic female may be in a relationship with of one of the men, but it is a given that once the male brings the woman inside the perimeter of the “circle of the club”, she becomes a kind of psychological common property, and her good manners or grace is presumed upon by all as in the above examples.. It’s the only way the Alpha M. can have “uncommitted sexual intent” without any sexual contact at all, and still be plug-ugly!

And here’s the rub; The lady cannot protest such or any vulgarities..because if she does, it is then asked why she sought out their company if she didn’t know what to expect…ie; It’s your problem!..and if the words are not spoken directly, they certainly are implied. But there are layers upon layers of pathos and insecurity that many women know of concerning the Alpha Males..and the biggest is their fear of failure.

Abbott’s front bench had one female…I believe..I remember in the coterie of the “Seacliff Hotel Sports and Social Club…Inc.” there was one….they called her “Nan”….which is telling…although she was younger than most of them.

The “Seacliff Hotel Sports and Social Club!” used to have a Friday night happy hour fund-raiser w/ meat-tray and chook raffles, called ; “The Clang-Bang” (don’t ask!!) and as to what “charity” they were “fund-raising” for, again; don’t ask..But it did eventually come to the attention of many members of the lower social echelon of that erstwhile club, that the proportion of swimming pools to the number of high-office holders was highly disproportionate to the trend of the general population…if you get my drift!…Anyway, the coterie would congregate at one corner of the front bar and make whoopie…Nan, (who was a hairdresser by trade) would be in the middle of that attentative group perched (yes..that’s the word to use) on a bar-stool..;the “Wheatland St. Madonna”? (The street next to The Seacliff Hotel) sipping her Bacardi’s and…She supported an enormous blonde Farrah-Fawcett bouffant so popular in that era…so you couldn’t miss her there….

All this went well, until one fateful Friday evening, being kept back in her salon tending to a rather demanding ‘blue-rinser’ Nan was late getting to the clang-bang raffle draw for the chook, one of the highlights of the gathering AND a prize she coveted as a future achievement….So when her regular number came up, Nan was not there at that moment to claim the prize..BUT, by the rules stated..; “no claim, no game”..that is; if you are not there to claim the prize you miss out..although there was a degree of hiatus sympaticus for the person involved as she quite often professed her desire for “something fowl” ( bring on the guffaws!)…but all debate was silenced by one half-shiggered Jim Tuffin when he took a moment of pause in the conversation to call out slurrily..:

“Ahh, fff#ck her!…if she’s not ‘ere, it’s ‘er hard luck”…and of course, he was just voicing the selfish feelings of the majority..it was a big chook!..so away with all sentiment and a re-draw!

Nan, did not take this news well when she arrived all flushed from the hurry and keen as mustard for the night….

“Well f#ck you too” was her parting words and she decamped to the Brighton Hotel, never to darken the doors of the Seacliff again….She was soon replaced by another blonde…they called her “Norah?..Dorah?…” anyway after that blonde woman in the TV. series of the times..: “Prisoner”.

In the Alpha-Male world of camaraderie , no-one is in-expendable and there is no such thing as “women friends”.

The Damascus Road.

The road to Damascus has been traveled, the veil has been lifted , the penny dropped..all that sort of thing that accompanies the awakening of the senses to the bleedin’ obvious.. This “awakening” happened today as I sat in a waiting room..(and was accentuated by the John Lord piece put up on the blog this morning)..just your average waiting room for whatever services, and there was the ubiquitous stack of reading material of glossy magazines, some so-called “informative” , some architectural, but mostly trashy gossip rags, full the sort of things that can get publishers deservedly sued.

Now, for many years..yes, That’s; “years”…I haven’t been inclined to pay any attention at all to either new magazines of whatever capacity save just glance through with a look at the pictures and perhaps the captions..or the same with books, even though sans pictures, I have tried but failed to get hooked into the story, save a few, too few exceptionals..and I have wondered why, when one hears from some quarters quite laudatory critiques and heaped on flattery to this or that latest publication. But many, many times I got to the book and find quite quickly that it is disappointing and a let down.

Why is it so?…

And today I think I can explain.

I was perusing a lifestyle magazine promoting a holiday by the sea, in a supposedly olde-worlde beach shack of minimal proportions..the article had all those expected pics of weather-beaten tables and driftwood decorations, fluffy cushions, wicker baskets, along with the regulation hammock and old fishing rods and white, white everything..incl’ tablecloth…set against a background of bark-shedding Melaleuca trees with a fore-view of sparkling sand and blue, blue sea.
Wonderful, wonderful…

And, of course..all fake..a pastiche of an imitation of how a advertising person would like to think the everyday holidayer would like to imagine…oh you get the picture!..all complete bullshit..from the conception to the creation. Nothing like the real thing..what we would once have called “hyped up”..I know, because I and my family had a “roughy-shack” for years over on the Peninsular when summer hol’s with the kids meant many family kids and “one in all in!”

Here.. https://freefall852.wordpress.com/2017/07/07/got-the-old-shack-up-for-sale/

So I chucked that one down in disgust and picked up a gardening mag’..and I looked..and..there were no fuckin’ gardens in it!..at least no gardens I have ever seen..just mock-ups of green corners, of plant pots rented from some office greenery supplier, I suppose and herded around entertainment settings with again the over-stuffed cushions (available from “X” for $xxx )..all nonsense and puffery..just a wad of paper promoting outdoor settees and swimming pools and the like..all manicured exotics that would be out of the financial reach of 99% of Australians wanting a real garden.

What was that film?..”The Truman Show”.

So I gave that one away as well and picked up a trashy mag as I was dying to know just who the “Jen” was on the cover that was getting back together..maybe!..with Brad..who the fuck are these people who I am expected to know by their first names?..It’s all shit!..total bullshit!..and people buy this shit and take this shit home and read this shit and then feel the need to share the shit with loads of other shit publications in a waiting-room of some professional services that is supposed to relax you..it gives me the shits!

Layer upon layer of just rubbish!..
Rubbish fascile entertainment.
Rubbish celebrities.
Rubbish economics.
Rubbish politics.
Rubbish relationships .
Rubbish employment prospects.
Rubbish careers.
Rubbish pretence of what reality is and the whole she-bang so over-hyped that what we once called a real life is but the sentiment of a soft warm glow sun-setted over the far horizon.

But that’s how it all is these days..just like the song; “Is that all there is” (Peggy Lee 1969)..and I hate to say it, folks..but yes..and as in the world of publishing, that’s all there is..in the main..banal, frivolous, facile pastiche..The real world no longer gets a look in and the people are fed this continual pap of confected, cosmetic, conflated concoction of fantasy and futility..even our imaginations are being “managed” (see holiday destinations above) to accept fantasy as reality..and if this goes on long enough, will it not become the reality? So now even the fake holidays are faker than fake!

If we are continually subjected to false realities with the sophistication of photo-shopped pictures, celebrity imprimatured locations and credit financed possibilities, will the fantasy not in some way..some hope , some “I want it” possibility become the expected reality and all true happenings get blocked as a denial of what is the now accepted ideal of the “perfect reality of life”.

And I just want to know one thing: Who the fuck are Brad and Jen!?

Got the old shack up for sale.

This may sound like a bit of sentimental tosh..but hey..

Got the old shack up for sale…years ago, back in around 1980..we (the family / brother, sister and the old folks) chipped in a few hundred quid each and bought this block of land on the peninsula and I built a holiday shack there..sure an it was built on the dirt cheap , out of bits of sticky-tape and bent wire sort of, but it was great for the kids to get away from the city and we’d go fishing, crabbing, that sort of thing…

You’d get there and the first thing is you’d run to claim a bed and throw your clobber in one of the two big rooms with four beds in each, grab a crab-rake or fishing rod from the corner and make for the beach..the shack..and it really was a shack..was just to flop in for the night..cook the tucker in and watch the fire burn and crackle before you hit the sack….it was effing great when the kids were growing up..

Some times there’d be half a dozen or so family or friends kids and the parents over for the school hols’ and it would be a whale of a time..sometimes on one of the days, we’d all go to Pt. Vincent to fish off the wharf there and I’d go check out the books and such in the op-shop over the road in St Neot’s church (best find : a first edition USA. of T.E.Lawrence ; “Seven Pillars Of Wisdom” !..heyyyy!) annex and we’d all end the day before going back to the shack with a big butcher’s wrapped paper pack of fish and chips…and how many chips went to the gulls!..the fish being caught local from one of the fishing boats that worked the gulf in the area…geez!..it was good.

But now, the old shack is up for sale, I am getting too old to maintain it..and after the recent hernia operation ( I’ll tell you about it someday!)..it’s all getting a bit too much for me..The kids have grown up into gen Y adults..and are no longer interested in (our self-named) “crab island” or “cockle cove” or “starfish rock”….the shallow flats are “smelly” now..and just who wants to gut and clean their own fish anymore?..indeed…who wants to even go fishing anymore..and the old place has that “old smell” and look..it never was pretty..the old shack..not like the brand-spanking new McMansions popping up all around the little enclave..and NO-WAY will anyone be using the “out-the-back” dunny..even if it is a flush toilet..the spiders?.the dark!? And the rainwater in the old tank..is it safe to drink?…doesn’t everyone nowadays have an ensuite?

And those retirees who came here to getaway from the city…and brought the city expectations with them, expect there to be ; services, no fire risk..and that grey-water run-off from the kitchen and the shower that goes under the trees to keep them watered in the long hot summers..is that a health risk, is it legal?..and if there is a bush fire, those trees around your shack could “catch on fire and send it onto my house..I’m going to ring the council”…But the birds, the animals, you protest..the delicate native lilies and such?..Poison the lot…not a blade of grass..not a hint of verdant cover shall tarnish the scoria and gravel expanse..

It’s the school holidays..and there are no kids fishing..not even an adult walking the beach..nor at the wharf down at Pt. Vincent..no kids, no people even to watch the crayfish boat sidle up to the wharf and unload it’s catch..not a curious soul..what has happened..is this a kind of Brave New World of hideaway people..is there no wonder in nature anymore?..no cry of children in a discovery of delight..Do not the parents delight in showing and explaining even with a touch of bullshit those strange shells and twists of sea-worm casings..to tell lurid tales of the goings on there just around the next cliff of “smugglers cove”..of dark nights and pirates and booty and “Gold doubloons and double moidores and louis d’ors and portagues on Los Meutos…Spanish waters, Spanish waters, ringing in my ears…” and good lord knows what else to see the wide-eyed wonder in their eyes as they fall to sleep snuggled in your lap by the fire in the old shack…

The shack is up for sale now..and I was there to cut the grass and tidy the place up a tad so it’ll look good…But really, it is only being sold for land-value..to be honest..no-one wants a shack anymore..you see..everyone now has an ensuite..the kids their ipads or smart-phones..But you know, as we were walking on the cliff-top road down to the jetty there..for just a moment..be it the wind-blown smell of the mallee trees in flower, or the cry of a gull in the air…for just that one short breath, I was back in the time with the kids and our arms full of fishing gear and buckets and a crab-net and we were all laughing and heading to the jetty and my little boy was saying that he bet he will catch a big, big squid…for just that one short moment..

Time has stolen the years from me , and I could bloody well weep.

Radicalising the next generation.

Many of us older lefties were radicalised by a previous generation that lived through the Great Depression and passed on to us through writing and song-line the stories of injustice that was perpetrated on the poor and vulnerable in those times..Who can forget Steinbeck’s ;“The Grapes of Wrath” or John Dos Passos ; “USA” trilogy and many other harrowing tales ( I have to apologise for my lack of Aust’ authors, but unfortunately those mentioned were the ones that caught my attention in those days) and then there was Pete Seeger and The Weavers , Arlo / Woody Gutherie and many others as well…enough to add to our parents stories and personal experiences to paint a colourful picture of the times and the tyranny.

I, myself came to the radical camp in my mid to late twenties, through the above and my own personal travels through Australia as a journeyman carpenter..I have written of some of these experiences.. ( eg: https://freefall852.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/morning-glory/ ) I became radicalised through a growing resentment toward the callous disregard of those “haves” toward the many “have-nots”..It was not through unemployment, nor lack of consumerable capacity, I for one, unlike my parents generation, never had a thought until my thirties about marriage and housing etc..

But what we see these days with a new generation radicalising is perhaps for the wrong reasons. We see anger at an incapacity to own housing or a lack of permanent employment or casualisation of the workforce..many are but “consumerables”, all real and worrying circumstances to be sure, but many are the effect of a system rather than the cause..and I have to wonder if what is not being addressed is the cause.
I can remember the circumstances that first awoke in me a need to leave my old world behind and strike out on an adventure into the wild, wild world without adult supervision and security of employment..a time when many “Boomers” simultaneously “walked away” from our parents stultifying social lifestyles and workplaces..I wrote about it here:

https://freefall852.wordpress.com/2016/03/31/epiphany/

Unfortunately, after so many years struggling on the periphery of poverty, boozing, nefarious substances and in many times wretched rental accommodation, many of us returned to the security of permanent employment and consumerism even if to just to get a decent meal!..and set about establishing ourselves in the comforts we thought we deserved..The result being the unforeseen situation we have now, where the younger generation is locked out of inner urban housing and their job opportunities shrunk to the predatory aims of a vicious neo-liberal market.

The younger generation now needs to radicalise from the ground up. They need to understand the basis for radicalisation..that the foundations of social equality and fairness is the first priority and is needed to support the building of larger and more substantial structure of a decent society, that will benefit not just those fortunate enough to land a decent, well-paid, permanent job, but those who move in and out of casual employment, those who are disabled and those of vulnerable or impoverished means..in short, we have to re-construct “The Society” that the likes of Turnbull and the IPA wish to destroy. Reconstructed on the foundations of a socialist program of equality and fairness.

I, like many tradesmen of my generation, was very fortunate in my capacity to be able to build the family homes we had from the ground up..with raw materials scraped and scabbed from building sites and quarries (and there’s a few tales in those circumstances!)..such opportunity is outside the capacity of most of the younger generation now..and the universal building codes throughout Australia forbid many owner builders from any ad-hoc construction, no matter how strong or secure it may be. I started full time work in the building trade at 14 yrs and what ever I got I got through my own efforts, but that is not to say such opportunity is afforded this next generation..My children who have good jobs (not in the build’ trade) are still unable to plan too far ahead for the future..this lousy LNP govt’ has stolen the dreams of many of the younger generation and sold it on to corporate profiteers like slaves to the market place..a curse on them all!

And THIS is the core of the need for radicalisation; to identify and crush the foul breath out of Neo-liberalism and its prophets. And THIS is where we of the older generation need to encourage and share our experiences to give leadership to this next generation of radicals, because to be radical is the only real solution to “keep the political bastards honest” even and especially in our own supported party and shine a light on where they go astray from bringing down policy suitable for what Jeremy Corbyn calls ; “For the many , not just the few”.

We have come a long way from those heady days of social liberation of the sixties and seventies, and it is time to hand the baton over to the young and fit to cry liberation in the streets..for it will never end while there are the scum and the greedy and the opportunists in the right-wing community to take advantage of every chance to screw over their fellow citizen when they see an opportunity.They must be crushed, hunted out and suppressed before their infections spread like a foul religion through the minds of the lazy and indolent among us.

I owe it…We…owe it to the future.

The Flaw in the Glass…

There is a weakness in the Armour , a flaw in the glass of the politically educated upper middle-class in these times..I have witnessed it when I prod and tease some posters who come to the site “trying it on” with their presumption of “authority of opinion” which they mistakenly presume is backed by an accepted “nod of approval” toward their “certificated qualifications” as being enough to “get them over the line”, to give them a pedestal position equal to their own self-esteem rating…and are quite surprised and even offended when they get mocked or confronted and challenged on their posts…where approbation was expected, they get confrontation .

Even in the new recognised blogs of social media, where so many who hold the presumption of THEY having the “correct” opinion, of THEY holding the shining light to guide the new direction for the working producers of society, they become crushed when they learn it is not all about THEM and their bourgeois values at all!..and their high opinions of themselves as a front and a font of social correctness turns out to be nought but a reflection of the shallow pool of self adoration!

I would call this “confrontational anxiety” : The shock of the new…the surprise of the sudden mocking or outrage against what we held to be a long thought-out, carefully constructed argument for or against a subject dear to our hearts, by sometimes gross innuendo and vulgar comparison and/or language that has sent shockwaves through more than just a few bloggers on social media sites, we can see it creeping into and from the audiences of Q&A shows, where the orderly manner of the format degenerates into a slanging-match almost replete with the cry of ;”Fight! Fight! Fight!” coming from the audience..This is the new media arising…

It is a new age of, possibly, true democracy..peoples democracy, proletarian democracy, where the unlearned and politically naïve along with the rat-cunning compete with decibel space for the ears of the politicians..drowning out the Machiavellian whispers from the main-stream media and lobby groups, exposing to the glaring spot-light of the mobile camera the secret meetings and assignations of those incumbents to a twitter-feed ravenous for victims and outrage!…No more brown-paper bags of dosh passed under tables at the local café, no more oversees trips without cost or confession..no more helicopter flights for the pancake face-pack privileged.

WE, THE PEOPLE, HAVE ARRIVED!

Our clothes are crumpled, our complextions varied, our hair awry, our pockets empty, our manners uncultured and our disposition very, very angry..and we are coming for YOU…MR. / Ms. Cancel-Culture. And we are coming to get what is rightfully ours and if that means walking over a few egos and trampling on many eggshell vanities, so be it..this is a class-war and we are fighting fit for it!

There is a cry in the streets for majority representation and it is with social media that it will be delivered..the voice of the internet has grown exponentially in these last several years despite a gormless “enlightened cabal”doing its best to blunt the edge or slow it down..There is now a gathering speed of technology outside the controlling arm of censorship that, like the age of steam against the age of petroleum, the dark ingenuity of humanity , unrestricted now and certainly into an absurdist future of non-gender delineation, will see an explosion of delivery systems of internet width, distance and speed beyond the limited imagination of capitalist financiers and social controllers.

Any future government will have to step into a new set of boots to both finance and deliver those up-dated delivery systems to have any sort of say as to how they are regulated and censored. If at all. The major religions will have to step aside for a new, growing belief in a more Earthly power of instant awareness and concern for cruelty or misdemeanour anywhere in the world and any given time..after all with the growing capacity of “smart-phones”, every public act of delinquency will be recorded on at least a dozen phones and instantly transmitted to the eyes of the world.

Get ready, my little chickadees, there is a tsunami of social-media technology coming where information both good and bad, accurate or shit, will be at our fingertips and any debatable point that you have developed, harboured and stewed over on long sleepless nights, to be delivered with accurate, concise language to blog and facebook page could be instantly pulled apart, confronted and debased in the most vulgar fashion for sometimes just the fun of it from some arrogant bastard who has no effing idea from deep in the jungle of inner Congo or outer suburbia..and their opening line just might be : WTF!

This poem by Henry Lawson could reflect the confrontational aggressiveness rising from the working poor and the under-educated in regions and suburbia..A poem that speaks for one and many, that now, with the rise of social media platforms, have a voice and heart and policy ideals to be heard and be heard they shall!..And neither media mogul nor lack of manners will hold that tsunami back..Prepare yourselves!

The Uncultured Rhymer To His Cultured Critics

Fight through ignorance, want, and care —
Through the griefs that crush the spirit;
Push your way to a fortune fair,
And the smiles of the world you’ll merit.
Long, as a boy, for the chance to learn —
For the chance that Fate denies you;
Win degrees where the Life-lights burn,
And scores will teach and advise you.

My cultured friends! you have come too late
With your bypath nicely graded;
I’ve fought thus far on my track of Fate,
And I’ll follow the rest unaided.
Must I be stopped by a college gate
On the track of Life encroaching?
Be dumb to Love, and be dumb to Hate,
For the lack of a college coaching?

You grope for Truth in a language dead —
In the dust ’neath tower and steeple!
What know you of the tracks we tread?
And what know you of our people?
‘I must read this, and that, and the rest,’
And write as the cult expects me? —
I’ll read the book that may please me best,
And write as my heart directs me!

You were quick to pick on a faulty line
That I strove to put my soul in:
Your eyes were keen for a ‘dash’ of mine
In the place of a semi-colon —
And blind to the rest. And is it for such
As you I must brook restriction?
‘I was taught too little?’ I learnt too much
To care for a pedant’s diction!

Must I turn aside from my destined way
For a task your Joss would find me?
I come with strength of the living day,
And with half the world behind me;
I leave you alone in your cultured halls
To drivel and croak and cavil:
Till your voice goes further than college walls,
Keep out of the tracks we travel!

Henry Lawson.

Yes!…We come with the strength of the living day…
And on your doorsteps will you soon find me!