|
|
|
A close analysis of social values, trends and occurrences... This is the world as you've never known it...Want to wake up with the Critic ?
I can hardly read a paper or listen to a news radio station or a politician speaking where they don’t mention “family values”, “paid maternity leave” or “working families”. What apparently has dropped from the “words to use” list is “prosperity” – a word I heard over and over again only last year.
Why is this? There are still lots of millionaire homes around, lots of expensive cars on the road and many of the expensive private schools are doing massive extensions to accommodate more and more students whose families are willing and able to pay handsome amounts for their education.
There has of course been the interest rate rises and escalating petrol prices but if we were all as prosperous as what we were being told, this would not have affected our lifestyle much at all. In reality though, prosperity for many came at the significant cost of many others. If we can rely on the statistics, the growth in casual labour during the last two decades has left more than one quarter of our workforce in casual jobs. Casual work can be unreliable, inconsistent and has none of the ordinary benefits of full time employment such as sick pay, holiday pay and in most cases superannuation.
The principal reason for going to work in the first place is to clothe and feed yourself and, if you have one, your family. Work can also provide other things of course such as social interaction, purpose and personal development. Nevertheless, if work does not provide the means for the very basics and offer some level of security then life can become very difficult indeed.
The current push by many female politicians to have maternity leave extended as well as made compulsory is commendable. What is not talked about in their argument is the significant amount of women, particularly those in casual employment, who will again miss out on yet another benefit enjoyed by their salaried sisters. Many of them are still searching for their piece of the prosperity and some means of having a family friendly lifestyle.
[Crime writing has always been popular but it seems to be gaining momentum.
Recently, I scrolled through the program for the upcoming Sydney Writers’ Festival. All the events, seminars and discussions on the topic of crime writing (at least the ticketed ones) were booked out. Maybe this happens every year I don’t know.
I then started wondering what it is about crime that fascinates us. After all, since television began in Australia, so much of the content has been based on crime, police stories or law. Whether these are Australian, American or British, crime shows seem to always attract a large and continuous following.
Remember some of the popular American crime shows over the past few decades. “L.A. Law”, “Law and Order” and its many spin-offs and “NYPD Blue” all drew large audiences across the globe.
The British ones I loved watching were the “Prime Suspect” series, “Dalziel and Pascoe” and “The Bill”. One of my favourite Australian ones, was “Wild Side” but there have been many more. Some of these were more gruesome than others but they were all excellent in their own way.
One thing they all had in common though was that the focus was on the police and the prosecutors rather than the criminals. The crimes were central to the story but how the crimes were solved was what made the shows so fasinating. What also made these shows more interesting than others was the vulnerabilities and frailties and sometimes, darker sides of the characters.
When the very dark “The Sopranos” hit our screens years ago, the focus changed completely to the lawbreakers themselves. This series was gruesome and extremely violent but the characters were so colourful but real and I was addicted to the very end. All of a sudden, the criminals were now the heroes and the crime busters the smaller parts of the story.
“Underbelly” even described in one article as a series that would make “The Sopranos” look like a picnic, lived up to its name. I don’t think I heard an Australian series talked about so much for years.
It’s not that this hasn’t been done before but more on the big screen. “The Godfather” series was (I think) the first to focus on the mafia and see things from the perspective of the criminal. “Goodfellas” did much the same.
If I am not mistaken, I think “Underbelly” has now created a new crime writing craze. I very much enjoy writing but crime I would rather watch.
On Saturday, here in New South Wales, Australia, Labor will be fighting it out among themselves about the privatisation of electricity. I can see five good reasons why electricity should stay in government hands.
1. Electricity is profitable – saves our State Government from begging for more money from our parent Federal Government. It may give our State Government a big lump sum payment but what happens when it runs out?
2. Our State Government is accountable for it – they have to make sure it keeps working properly. Once it goes into private hands, the accountability for it changes and profits take much more of a priority than accountability.
3. It will prevent yet another industry becoming casualised. Casual work had done so much damage to the living standards, not to mention the health, of families and workers who now resort to casual or part-time work.
4. All our State and Federal Governments have committed to environmental measures and the impacts of “climate change” so are bound to retain and develop “clean energy” programs. Will these programs be maintained once electricity becomes a private enterprise.
5. Once the State Government decides to sell off electricity, there will be a conflict of interest: on one hand - to make it more profitable and therefore encourage more liberal use; and on the other hand to encourage energy conservation.
Everyone has their own side to the electricity privatisation story. Have they forgotten the public roads that were cut off to force motorists to use the Cross City Tunnel or the narrowing of the Epping Highway to move more and more motorists into the Lane Cove Tunnel?
I say, keep electricity accountable. Keep it public.
On Friday night, I tuned into ABC 1 and watched for the first time “Grumpy Old Men”. For those who haven’t seen it, the show is funny and topical with older men airing their pet hates about the world today. The show is British but it would resonate with many here in Australia.
[ Click here to read more ]
ALL ABOUT this stuffy office are mediocrities with smug expressions and an enormous sense of self-importance — these are men with children.
Something about having procreated, gives these cliquey donkeys a sense of superiority, which they’re only too eager to exhibit.
Fark knows why they’re so hoity; just about all of them are overweight, and dress in that bland casual, sneakers and shirt overhanging-their-jeans look
[ Click here to read more ]
AMERICA has the sickness, Europe and the Middle East have always had the sickness, England has succumbed, Australia's showing all the symptoms, the question is, will YOU be next? If you ask a humble idiot like me, I'd say you've already got it.
Yep, you have the sickness, and so does everyone around you.
Click onto www.dailytelegraph.com.au this morning and you'll see the sickness. They've published a photo of dead celeb Keith Ledger acting out a suicide fantasy from a sicko short film he made
[ Click here to read more ]
WALKING through Sydney’s domain during lunchtime on a business day you ideally should be carrying a hockey stick.
With its lightweight feel and swing, it’s just perfect for swatting joggers as they swarm over the path, all sweaty and righteous in their exercise.
Don’t think for a minute these perspiring pavement-pounders will get out of your way, because in jogger logic, the person who’s sweating in the name of a physical workout is socially higher in importance
[ Click here to read more ]
RELIGION is a brutal bastard of a thing, especially when the fundamentalists start preaching their hateful claptrap.
God isn’t nice at all: he, she, or it is always backing one faith over another. And he’s a vengeful bugger, with an attitude to human suffering equaling the CIA with their secret torture clinics.
If you bumped into God in a bar, you’d have to glass the prick on general principle
[ Click here to read more ]
"Neil is a sexy fox".
That's what an ex-University colleague said to me one night, as we bitched, whined and complained about the Village Baker's Delight. Did I mention she works 6 - 9 weekdays baking your block loaf under the pseudonym "Sci Fi Fan #1
[ Click here to read more ]
More Posts
100 Posts dating from November 2006
Email Subscription
Receive e-mail notifications of new posts on this blog:
|
|
|
Janet Collins
Billy M
Add Comments
Comments (1)
Read More
