All serious this week. Here are two news articles that caught my eye that even I can’t find a joke in: both articles worth thinking about though.
1) Please Sir, can I have some more?
For more than 10 years I have been reading articles on the decline of real wages in the USA and the devastating effects this has, and will have, on that country. If you’ve read as many reviews and analysis’s as I have on the last US Presidential election then you will know that people didn’t vote for Trump because of his racist policies but because he promised them a break from the cycle of decline in their living standards.
It comes as no surprise but a great disappointment to read here that Australia is now experiencing the same depression in wages. No surprise because for more than 20 years we have been following similar policies, and the article lays out the economic consequences of those policies. It is not that Australia is not generating income, it is that more of the income is diverted to profits than wages.
Attempts to reverse this trend will be called class warfare. The numbers don’t lie – the real war on class has already been won.
2) How much is enough?
Another news article about the amount of money being spent by the Federal Government on war memorials, this one here about the $100m spent on an interactive (?) display sited on and about the battles during WW1 on the Western Front. In spite of the poor attendance at this new memorial the government has approved another $500m to be spent on the War Memorial in Canberra. Keep in mind that for the recent WW1 commemorations in Europe, Australia spent more per capita than any other country.
This money is a waste and is completely unnecessary. Australia already does a very good job of remembering and honouring fallen soldiers. Disagree with me? Then do as I have done and hop in a van and travel around and observe the war memorials that exist in every town in this country. And not just the big cities, but the small towns: the small towns that are growing, and the small towns that are dying.
I’ll make a wild claim: every town in Australia that has had at least 500 permanent residents at some time in it’s history will have a very well cared for war memorial, even if that town is now no more than just a row of boarded up shops and a sign to the next town. We have stayed in and driven through many such towns, and in each one there is a very well cared for memorial to the many that served.
I give you three examples that prove my point: Central Tilba NSW, Swifts Creek, Vic and Wilsons Promontory, Vic. Central Tilba continues to flourish and there must be more shops now than there ever has been. By being sited on the edge of town the memorial allows you to stand with your back to the commerce and look across the fields to the austere granite cliffs. It is hard to believe that Swifts Creek has ever flourished, and there is now no reason to even slow down as you drive through the town, making the memorial easy to pick, being the only place with green and freshly mown grass and fence posts still upright and painted. For the memorial at Wilsons Prom I have no words, instead I encourage you to visit it for yourself.
I can’t help but think the $500m to be spent on an already impressive memorial, that another battle front has been opened in the culture wars, especially when I read articles about a lack of funds for treating returned soldiers suffering traumatic stress.