What's The Mood Like In Victoria?
I was down in Melbourne for a day and it so happened that it was the State election. The funny thing about Melbourne is that customer service people really want to talk to you and find out what you think (This is unheard of in Sydney). This resulted in repeated conversations where I was asked whether I had voted already ("No, I'm from Sydney. I'm just here for the day") and their volunteering the information that they had voted already, and had enthusiastically voted for the ALP because they hated Tony Abbott so much.
"You know you're voting in the State election and not Federal right?" I pointed out, possibly in a cynical Sydney sort of way. In each instance I was told they didn't care, they had to send a message.
So, just in case Tony Abbott hasn't got the message, here it is loud and clear: the shop assistants of Melbourne loathe you and are willing to vote against the Coalition especially because it would be against your interests to do so. The ALP could have run Daffy Duck - Dr. Napthine wasn't going to win thanks to his Federal colleagues and the Prime Minister.
I bet that looks mighty fine in the Liberal Party room tomorrow.
The Claire Underwood 'Do' Is Like Aspiring To Charles Manson
Julie Bishop is aspiring to all kinds of crazy lately. Just how psycho is Julie Bishop? She just reopened the nuclear debate in Australia. This is rather ironic given that the world is browning off the notion of nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima meltdown. Angela Merkel no less declared if the Japanese can't make this work, nobody can make it work, and started decommissioning Germany's own nuclear reactors.
Uranium spot prices are collapsing, making some of our oldest uranium mines face closure. This naturally leads one to suspect that perhaps Julie Bishop is the uranium mine lobby's poster girl. I guess we shouldn't be surprised that the lawyer who defended James Hardie in the asbestos case was in the pockets of such an unpopular lobby.
The weirdest thing about Ms. Bishop's reopening of the nuclear debate is that she wants us to consider having nuclear power stations because of the need to combat emissions with this marvellous zero-emissions technology. How could we have been so amiss in not considering nukes! Silly us! So maybe the foreign minster at least is not a climate change denialista. Otherwise the premise to her argument would make no bloody sense. One wonders if this is part of Tony Abbott's change of stance in the wake of the Brisbane G-20 ambush where just about everybody except Vladimir Putin shirtfronted Tony Abbott to face up to the reality of climate change.
It's a funny world, really. Until we build a nuclear power station and it melts down.
A Gen-X View of the Universe.
"The Issue Isn't Pussy, It's Monkey" - from The Right Stuff
Film, Cinema, Movies, TV, Music, Rock
2014/11/30
2014/11/27
A Laughable Editorial
You Wanted People To Vote Them In, Darren Goodsir
Defence Minister David Johnston is in a spot of bother this week - amidst all the other crappy developments for the Abbott Government, like FOFA and dropping the $7 co-payment - for having described the Australian Submarine Corporation as being incapable to even build a canoe. That might even be true, if coming from a legitimate standpoint of cost and process. After all, we can always point to the crown jewel of the ASC, the Collins class submarine.
All the same, Johnston is in a spot of bother because basically it indicates the Abbott government won't seriously consider the ASC as an option for developing the next generation submarines. Of course nothing this government does smacks of anything remotely like impartial, so it's not like Johnston is a singular fuck-up of a minister in a lineup of otherwise excellent ministers. He is merely a minor gaffe-making minister in a lineup of ideological idiots who are way in above their shrunken heads.
Still, the Sydney Morning Herald editor wants to take him to task!
What really hurts, given that Mr. Abbott went on to win that 2013 election, is that the Sydney Morning Herald openly supported a change of government to this pack of arrogant imbeciles. Why? Because a change was better than more of the same. It was as if the editor did not consider the possibility of a change for the worse - which alas has come to pass. Were we Hobbits, we'd cast Mr. Goodsir into the open maws of Mt. Doom, but no. We're here in Australia, governed by people with the sensibility of Orcs.
So it gives me great pleasure writing once more, you wanted this mob Darren Goodsir. You can't be complaining about their performance this early in the piece, especially over some throwaway line. It's only been 14 months. There is much, much more of this arrogance and recklessness and contempt of the public as well as their ideological opponents, still to come. This whole shmozzle of 14months in power is merely the entrée, the aperitif if you will, of this lousy government - a government you wholeheartedly asked Australians to vote in. Why, these people can't even craft a budget that gets through the Senate, 6 months since Budget Night. Thank you of the fine recommendation. The pity is that I didn't follow such crap advice and still somehow ended up with this unhappiness-making government.
Behold the emptiness of media persuasion. I blame stupidity.
Apologia
I bagged out the teachers of Tony Abbott in my previous entry. It was a bit rough on my part. Those teachers - whatever their degree or depth of their faith - didn't exactly set about to shape the youth that turned into "Prime Minister Tony Abbott" in the manner that he turned out. Doubtless those fine men and women are shocked at how misshapen their product is, and just how much harm he is doing to their reputation as educators. For that I offer my sincere apologies for my offence and my condolences for their sorrow and regret.
Defence Minister David Johnston is in a spot of bother this week - amidst all the other crappy developments for the Abbott Government, like FOFA and dropping the $7 co-payment - for having described the Australian Submarine Corporation as being incapable to even build a canoe. That might even be true, if coming from a legitimate standpoint of cost and process. After all, we can always point to the crown jewel of the ASC, the Collins class submarine.
All the same, Johnston is in a spot of bother because basically it indicates the Abbott government won't seriously consider the ASC as an option for developing the next generation submarines. Of course nothing this government does smacks of anything remotely like impartial, so it's not like Johnston is a singular fuck-up of a minister in a lineup of otherwise excellent ministers. He is merely a minor gaffe-making minister in a lineup of ideological idiots who are way in above their shrunken heads.
Still, the Sydney Morning Herald editor wants to take him to task!
Defence Minister David Johnston is hardly displaying the qualities needed to oversee the subs decision, let alone his department.
Senator Johnston has embarrassed Australia's defence forces, potentially undermined national security and lost the confidence of South Australians by saying he didn't trust the government-owned ASC - formerly the Australian Submarine Corporation - to build a canoe.
ASC is involved in building three air warfare destroyers for the navy and maintains the Collins class submarines.
Perhaps such a "rhetorical flourish" - his words and those of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, not ours - could be excused if it were an isolated embarrassment.
But the minister's performance has been substandard.
Mr Abbott eventually will reshuffle cabinet, when he tires of defending the indefensible.Note, the interesting tone of discovery in the excerpt there. It is as if it comes to the editor Mr. Goodsir as a tremendous surprise that there should be a sense of arrogance lingering around this government. I mean, really Mr Goodsir, you noticed this now, and not when they were in opposition and dared to go through an entire election campaign without offering up red of their policy? Perhaps Mr. Goodsir didn't find this arrogant but merely strategic (or politic), but most sensible people knew full well then that arrogance would be the hallmark signature of an Abbott Government.
For the sake of appearing strong and stable, a sense of arrogance lingers around this government. This week the Prime Minister repeatedly refused to admit he made a statement promising no cuts to the ABC and SBS.
What really hurts, given that Mr. Abbott went on to win that 2013 election, is that the Sydney Morning Herald openly supported a change of government to this pack of arrogant imbeciles. Why? Because a change was better than more of the same. It was as if the editor did not consider the possibility of a change for the worse - which alas has come to pass. Were we Hobbits, we'd cast Mr. Goodsir into the open maws of Mt. Doom, but no. We're here in Australia, governed by people with the sensibility of Orcs.
So it gives me great pleasure writing once more, you wanted this mob Darren Goodsir. You can't be complaining about their performance this early in the piece, especially over some throwaway line. It's only been 14 months. There is much, much more of this arrogance and recklessness and contempt of the public as well as their ideological opponents, still to come. This whole shmozzle of 14months in power is merely the entrée, the aperitif if you will, of this lousy government - a government you wholeheartedly asked Australians to vote in. Why, these people can't even craft a budget that gets through the Senate, 6 months since Budget Night. Thank you of the fine recommendation. The pity is that I didn't follow such crap advice and still somehow ended up with this unhappiness-making government.
Behold the emptiness of media persuasion. I blame stupidity.
Apologia
I bagged out the teachers of Tony Abbott in my previous entry. It was a bit rough on my part. Those teachers - whatever their degree or depth of their faith - didn't exactly set about to shape the youth that turned into "Prime Minister Tony Abbott" in the manner that he turned out. Doubtless those fine men and women are shocked at how misshapen their product is, and just how much harm he is doing to their reputation as educators. For that I offer my sincere apologies for my offence and my condolences for their sorrow and regret.
2014/11/24
Cuts To The ABC
When Are These Things Not Political?
If there's one institution in the media landscape that deserves a bit of respect, it has to be the ABC. Even more than the Fairfax newspapers, the ABC has been editorially neutral. The fact that conservatives have a bad time when they end up on the ABC is not the ABC's liberal bias as much as the Coalition believe, but rather the ABC's bias towards facts and science. In other words, it shouldn't be made into the ABC's problem when clearly so many in the Coalition don't believe in facts and would like to invent their own realities. Like Tony Abbott, who wants us to believe he didn't promise to not cut the ABC's funding, when he said he would. (Of course today he is arguing that he's not breaking his promise not to cut when he makes these cuts,which is an even weirder spin on facts as they stand). It's all very laughable because they can't both be true.
Should the ABC be made responsible for idiots who can't get facts straight, can't understand science or how it is delivering sound prognostication? It's actually hard to say. I kind of think the teachers at the exclusive private schools these Coalition members attended that did a really bad job in teaching epistemology to these clunk-heads deserve more blame than the ABC. What kind of evil (or incompetent, you pick) educators gave us Chris Pyne? What school deprived Malcolm Turnbull of learning judgment? What idiot Jesuits gave us Tony Abbott, Oxford Blue Rhodes Scholar who can't understand logic or climate science?
It's like that song where they sing "there's no telling where the money went."
The ABC for its part is going to town with its cuts. One imagines there are a lot of tenured people of whom it wants to rid itself so this will be management's big opportunity to push some people out the door. It's hard to be sympathetic because, well, I was once an ABC employee too and I can tell you that there are some amazing bits of deadwood clogged in the ABC system. It's a bit obnoxious when somebody says the ABC has flab to cut, but if you know the inner workings of the ABC somewhat, you'll be forced to admit that there might be a point to it - maybe even a sharp edge too. You'd think that the same person would be mightily offended if one went up to her and said she has some flab that can be cut out so God only knows why the ABC and its fans won't get up in arms about some comment like that going to the press at Fairfax.
The cuts being made by the ABC themselves are political payback because it hits the electorates of the Coalition pretty solidly. They're closing production facilities in Adelaide, probably because Christopher Pyne made an appeal for it. One imagines this as a diabolical plea made by Pyne so that the ABC would close the Adelaide ABC production unit and thus offer up less scrutiny of Pyne in his own country. The ABC are also closing their production unit in Perth and axing the 7:30 report in the regions - which can be read as payback to the Nationals for supporting their rather nasty Liberal Party brethren. It's hard to imagine the latte-sipping inner-city types in Sydney and Melbourne would shed tears over those cuts. The bush, as it were, is about to get even less connection to the urban centres of this country. It's a funny kind of boomerang that hits the thrower in the head. So, here's laughing to the cutters getting cut. Hardy-har-har.
If there's one institution in the media landscape that deserves a bit of respect, it has to be the ABC. Even more than the Fairfax newspapers, the ABC has been editorially neutral. The fact that conservatives have a bad time when they end up on the ABC is not the ABC's liberal bias as much as the Coalition believe, but rather the ABC's bias towards facts and science. In other words, it shouldn't be made into the ABC's problem when clearly so many in the Coalition don't believe in facts and would like to invent their own realities. Like Tony Abbott, who wants us to believe he didn't promise to not cut the ABC's funding, when he said he would. (Of course today he is arguing that he's not breaking his promise not to cut when he makes these cuts,which is an even weirder spin on facts as they stand). It's all very laughable because they can't both be true.
Should the ABC be made responsible for idiots who can't get facts straight, can't understand science or how it is delivering sound prognostication? It's actually hard to say. I kind of think the teachers at the exclusive private schools these Coalition members attended that did a really bad job in teaching epistemology to these clunk-heads deserve more blame than the ABC. What kind of evil (or incompetent, you pick) educators gave us Chris Pyne? What school deprived Malcolm Turnbull of learning judgment? What idiot Jesuits gave us Tony Abbott, Oxford Blue Rhodes Scholar who can't understand logic or climate science?
It's like that song where they sing "there's no telling where the money went."
The ABC for its part is going to town with its cuts. One imagines there are a lot of tenured people of whom it wants to rid itself so this will be management's big opportunity to push some people out the door. It's hard to be sympathetic because, well, I was once an ABC employee too and I can tell you that there are some amazing bits of deadwood clogged in the ABC system. It's a bit obnoxious when somebody says the ABC has flab to cut, but if you know the inner workings of the ABC somewhat, you'll be forced to admit that there might be a point to it - maybe even a sharp edge too. You'd think that the same person would be mightily offended if one went up to her and said she has some flab that can be cut out so God only knows why the ABC and its fans won't get up in arms about some comment like that going to the press at Fairfax.
The cuts being made by the ABC themselves are political payback because it hits the electorates of the Coalition pretty solidly. They're closing production facilities in Adelaide, probably because Christopher Pyne made an appeal for it. One imagines this as a diabolical plea made by Pyne so that the ABC would close the Adelaide ABC production unit and thus offer up less scrutiny of Pyne in his own country. The ABC are also closing their production unit in Perth and axing the 7:30 report in the regions - which can be read as payback to the Nationals for supporting their rather nasty Liberal Party brethren. It's hard to imagine the latte-sipping inner-city types in Sydney and Melbourne would shed tears over those cuts. The bush, as it were, is about to get even less connection to the urban centres of this country. It's a funny kind of boomerang that hits the thrower in the head. So, here's laughing to the cutters getting cut. Hardy-har-har.
2014/11/20
Basic Income In Switzerland
I Bet You Thought I Was Nuts
A few days ago, I wrote that the dole shouldn't be seen as this stigma but as a dividend a successful society can pay to its citizens. Turns out folks in Switzerland are way ahead of me on the curve with this one and they are proposing a 'Basic Income' for every citizen. How much? They're talking US$2,600 per month, which is like $3,000 in AUD right now.
More seriously it makes sense to get rid of Centrelink and the assorted government bureaucracy designed to bully the out-of-work, and just hand out the money. The people working the bureaucratic machinery at Centrelink don't really want to be there any more than the out-of-work, applying for payments. Our society would be much better off if we simply junk the whole pretence that this 'procedure' is somehow productive or good.
It would be a lot less aggravating for a start, and probably result in an explosion of cultural expression and technological advances. If people want to earn more, they can work. If people don't want to work and can figure out a way of living on this money, they can just drop out and stop pretending they're keen on working. Think of the collective sigh of relief you would hear.
One would imagine that it would narrow the pool of working people considerably, but employers would have the benefit of knowing that the people who turn up, really want to be there. In turn, employers would have to genuinely compete to provide workplaces worthy of the people who want to work in spite of the free money available to them - because they must be genuinely dedicated types. We might even begin to have a sensible discussion about what work really means, and how it should be valued and evaluated. No more McJobs and working poor. No more angry queues at Centrelink.
Think of all the marvellous novels written about the angst of being well looked after by a generous state. I for one would say this would be a great thing.
If you think this is a great idea, spread it around. We need to be talking about this stuff.
A few days ago, I wrote that the dole shouldn't be seen as this stigma but as a dividend a successful society can pay to its citizens. Turns out folks in Switzerland are way ahead of me on the curve with this one and they are proposing a 'Basic Income' for every citizen. How much? They're talking US$2,600 per month, which is like $3,000 in AUD right now.
The idea of a living wage has been brewing in the country for over a year and last month, supporters of the movement dumped a truckload of eight million coins outside the Parliament building in Bern. The publicity stunt, which included a five-cent coin for every citizen, came attached with 125,000 signatures. Only 100,000 are necessary for any constitutional amendment to be put to a national vote, since Switzerland is a direct democracy.
The proposed plan would guarantee a monthly income of CHF 2,500, or about $2,600 as of November 2014. That means that every family (consisting of two adults) can expect an unconditional yearly income of $62,400 without having to work, with no strings attached. While Switzerland’s cost of living is significantly higher than the US—a Big Mac there costs $6.72—it’s certainly not chump change. It’s reasonable income that could provide, at the minimum, a comfortable bare bones existence.
The benefits are obvious. Such policy would, in one fell swoop, wipe out poverty. By replacing existing government programs, it would reduce government bureaucracy. Lower skilled workers would also have more bargaining power against employers, eliminating the need for a minimum wage. Creative types would then have a platform to focus on the arts, without worrying about the bare necessities. And those fallen on hard times have a constant safety net to find their feet again.
Detractors of the divisive plan also have a point. The effects on potential productivity are nebulous at best. Will people still choose to work if they don’t have to? What if they spend their government checks on sneakers and drugs instead of food and education? Scrappy abusers of the system could take their spoils to spend in foreign countries where their money has more purchasing power, thus providing little to no benefit to Switzerland’s own economy. There’s also worries about the program’s cost and long term sustainability. It helps that Switzerland happens to be one of the richest countries in the world by per capita income.Money for nothing? Jeez, where can I get the chicks for free, and we'll have an 80's Dire Straits song going.
More seriously it makes sense to get rid of Centrelink and the assorted government bureaucracy designed to bully the out-of-work, and just hand out the money. The people working the bureaucratic machinery at Centrelink don't really want to be there any more than the out-of-work, applying for payments. Our society would be much better off if we simply junk the whole pretence that this 'procedure' is somehow productive or good.
It would be a lot less aggravating for a start, and probably result in an explosion of cultural expression and technological advances. If people want to earn more, they can work. If people don't want to work and can figure out a way of living on this money, they can just drop out and stop pretending they're keen on working. Think of the collective sigh of relief you would hear.
One would imagine that it would narrow the pool of working people considerably, but employers would have the benefit of knowing that the people who turn up, really want to be there. In turn, employers would have to genuinely compete to provide workplaces worthy of the people who want to work in spite of the free money available to them - because they must be genuinely dedicated types. We might even begin to have a sensible discussion about what work really means, and how it should be valued and evaluated. No more McJobs and working poor. No more angry queues at Centrelink.
Think of all the marvellous novels written about the angst of being well looked after by a generous state. I for one would say this would be a great thing.
If you think this is a great idea, spread it around. We need to be talking about this stuff.
2014/11/19
Dogs Are Better People Than Politicians
Couldn't Keep Denying
It amazes me that the Abbott government keeps limping on being the way it is. Normally, being the host nation for something like APEC or the G-20 burnishes the standing of a nation, but somehow Tony Abbott and his miserable government managed to lower the standing of Australia, simply by being their climate-change-denying selves. At the end, Tony Abbott made a speech to the effect that all the governments represented at the G-20 wanted to do something about climate change. It hardly seemed plausible given the degree of resistance mounted and shown by the same government, during the lead up to the G-20 meeting. It sure was hard not to talk about something all these guests anted to talk about it.
I guess that's the nature of summit meets. The host nation doesn't really get to control the agenda if it isn't a nuclear superpower. Tony Abbott made Australia look like an adolescent who is in denial about having to do chores, on the international stage. I'm sure the world took notice. Now that China and America have decided to do something about climate change, then it also activated Clive Palmer and the PUP's agenda of keeping an ETS. Greg Hunt might think they've mothballed the thing but it might comeback from the dead sooner than people thought. After all, the problem with Direct Action is that it is not scaleable in the same way as the ETS. The more there is to cleanup, the better it would be to simply ramp up the ETS again, and be done with it.
No Cuts To Adelaide ABC? Then Don't Make Stupid Cuts
Chris Pyne, he of the Coalition Government that came to power promising not to make any cuts to the ABC and SBS but promptly started cutting as soon as they got in, started a Chang.Org petition to stop the ABC cutting the Adelaide production facility.
Let us now count the shades of stupid in this petition and petitioner.
Hooray For Jacqui Lambie (Can't Believe I Just Typed That)
Jacqui Lambie has been going rogue for a few weeks now, over the conditions of defence personnel and something to do with their Christmas bonuses. It has gotten to the point where to refuses to pass anything of the government unless they do as she says, which is to say, she's holding the government to ransom, all on her own-some. The early net effect of this ornery statesman-ship is that the ALP has corralled her into stiffing the Coalition's plans to water down the Future of Finance Advice changes.
This is no ordinary stiffing; this is being described as a "body blow" by the SMH, but more accurately, it's the moment when it has become untenable for the Coalition Government. To date, the Coalition Government has managed to get some of their idiotic plank of policy through the Senate thanks to Clive Palmer making deals with them. Only a couple weeks ago it looks like Palmer was the idiot in letting the Direct (In)Action policy through in time for the Brisbane G-20 summit. Yet now, the rogue PUP Senator is undoing done deals.
If it's bad enough that Joe Hockey's government hasn't been able to pass its awful-awful-awful budget, six months hence from its big debut, then the PUP disintegration ought to give them pause. This might be the moment where it forces the Coalition (the No-alition) to properly think about a Double Dissolution, because they ain't getting it done now. The earliest opportunity to vote out these drongos would be most welcome.
It amazes me that the Abbott government keeps limping on being the way it is. Normally, being the host nation for something like APEC or the G-20 burnishes the standing of a nation, but somehow Tony Abbott and his miserable government managed to lower the standing of Australia, simply by being their climate-change-denying selves. At the end, Tony Abbott made a speech to the effect that all the governments represented at the G-20 wanted to do something about climate change. It hardly seemed plausible given the degree of resistance mounted and shown by the same government, during the lead up to the G-20 meeting. It sure was hard not to talk about something all these guests anted to talk about it.
I guess that's the nature of summit meets. The host nation doesn't really get to control the agenda if it isn't a nuclear superpower. Tony Abbott made Australia look like an adolescent who is in denial about having to do chores, on the international stage. I'm sure the world took notice. Now that China and America have decided to do something about climate change, then it also activated Clive Palmer and the PUP's agenda of keeping an ETS. Greg Hunt might think they've mothballed the thing but it might comeback from the dead sooner than people thought. After all, the problem with Direct Action is that it is not scaleable in the same way as the ETS. The more there is to cleanup, the better it would be to simply ramp up the ETS again, and be done with it.
No Cuts To Adelaide ABC? Then Don't Make Stupid Cuts
Chris Pyne, he of the Coalition Government that came to power promising not to make any cuts to the ABC and SBS but promptly started cutting as soon as they got in, started a Chang.Org petition to stop the ABC cutting the Adelaide production facility.
Let us now count the shades of stupid in this petition and petitioner.
- He's a freaking minister of government. He's a lot closer the to the decision making than public petitioners and their petitions.
- He is a freaking minister of a government that is cutting $254million to the ABC budget.
- He is a freaking minister of a government that is cutting that $254million in the face of the ABC asking them not to make such cuts.
- The alarming hypocrisy of a minister of a government making largely gratuitous, political cuts, on alleged economic grounds (whether true or not) can't complain about such cuts affecting their electorate.
- Since when does Chris Pyne care about the ABC's production capacity anywhere? If he's going to start caring about that, maybe he should be looking into the plight of the Film & TV industries a lot more carefully?
Hooray For Jacqui Lambie (Can't Believe I Just Typed That)
Jacqui Lambie has been going rogue for a few weeks now, over the conditions of defence personnel and something to do with their Christmas bonuses. It has gotten to the point where to refuses to pass anything of the government unless they do as she says, which is to say, she's holding the government to ransom, all on her own-some. The early net effect of this ornery statesman-ship is that the ALP has corralled her into stiffing the Coalition's plans to water down the Future of Finance Advice changes.
This is no ordinary stiffing; this is being described as a "body blow" by the SMH, but more accurately, it's the moment when it has become untenable for the Coalition Government. To date, the Coalition Government has managed to get some of their idiotic plank of policy through the Senate thanks to Clive Palmer making deals with them. Only a couple weeks ago it looks like Palmer was the idiot in letting the Direct (In)Action policy through in time for the Brisbane G-20 summit. Yet now, the rogue PUP Senator is undoing done deals.
If it's bad enough that Joe Hockey's government hasn't been able to pass its awful-awful-awful budget, six months hence from its big debut, then the PUP disintegration ought to give them pause. This might be the moment where it forces the Coalition (the No-alition) to properly think about a Double Dissolution, because they ain't getting it done now. The earliest opportunity to vote out these drongos would be most welcome.
2014/11/16
Yes - State Theatre 15/Nov/2014
Majestic Nostalgia
There's nothing so life affirming as hearing the music you loved growing up, played live by the very people. There's definitely something comforting in hearing something you know like the back of your hand, visiting the emotional landscape you trod so often in your adolescence. At some point that's all the pleasure you need, all the comfort you need. Should Yes be breaking new ground even unto this point in their careers? Is that a fair kind of expectation? Should their fans have to step up to new horizons with this band? It sure makes one wonder.
In the mean time, a night of Yes going through mostly their older portions of their successful catalogue is a night of majestic nostalgia.
What's Good About It
What's good about Yes this time through is that Jon Davison has become more accustomed to the music and found his voice within the music. The last time I saw them, Davison had just arrived and was singing in only his fifth gig with the band. The band have also tinkered with the arrangements so even the really familiar tracks had little interesting wrinkles in them.
The light show was better than last time and they sound really good in the State Theatre. It just seems to be a good fit for the music and the sound and the space. With a few odd moments, the playing is still superb. Overall, the band still has the nimbleness of turning on a dime as well as the rigorous discipline of playing complex passages with precision.
More importantly the gestalt of Yes music was very much alive and present, and so the sonorous passages of their most splendiferous amazing wonderful extraordinary beautiful music, came alive. There were no metaphorical clowns, no tigers, lions or bears. Just the glory of Yes music.
Jon Anderson quipped last year "Squire said, 'we don't do reggae'". It's a very good thing that Yes play on the beat, uncompromising and hard. It's the way rock bands ought to be.
What's Bad About It
They started a little slow with the opening number 'Close to the Edge'. It was so noticeably slow that I thought it was going to be a really long night. At one point, after the choral section of 'Close to the Edge' you could hear Geoff Downes push the beat to speed it up but the band fell back to the slower pace straight after the organ break. Sometime during the late part of 'And You And I' the band sort of woke up and started playing at a more familiar speed. By the time they were into 'Siberian Khatru', they were playing with gusto, which was a relief.
It was probably more 'interesting' than 'bad', but for the first twenty minutes it really felt like it was going to be a 3hour concert of Yes-In-Slo-Mo.
What's Interesting About It
With any Yes concert, you always find the choice of material interesting. This concert featured a full in-order play through of 'Close to the Edge' and 'Fragile'. In-between were a couple of tracks form the new album 'Heaven And Earth', while the encore was 'I've Seen All Good People' and 'Owner of a Lonely Heart'.
On the one hand, it was a selection that really favours the golden era of the early 70s when they made their mark, with a couple of current pieces and the hit single from the 1980s. You can't fault the choice, but on the other hand you're left wondering about all the other great moments. There's effectively nothing from 'Tales from Topographic Oceans' through to 'Drama', then 'Big Generator' through to 'Fly From Here'. That's a lot of great music they're not addressing at all. They can't please everyone, but they didn't really go out of their way to please anybody but the Baby Boomers and one token gesture to their 80s success.
That being said - and I don't mean the above as negatively as it might sound - it was a setlist of beautiful Yes music. The highlight of the night was surely the material off 'Fragile' where the most progressive arrangements were brought to life. 'We Have Heaven' segueing into 'South Side of the Sky' was masterfully executed and the vocal arrangements really blossomed beautifully in those sections. 'South Side of the Sky' is one of those rarer gems of Yes' catalogue that doesn't make it on to the set list as often as say, 'Roundabout' or 'Heart of the Sunrise', so it was fully contextualised against the rest of 'Fragile'. The downside is that you wonder if they couldn't find a way to play more grand things than 'Cans and Brahms' and 'Five percent For Nothing'.
For Absent Friends
'Cans And Brahms' and 'Five Percent For Nothing' were the oddities of the night. 'Cans and Brahms' was in its heyday, Rick Wakeman's spot to show off his chops and the latest sounds of his arsenal of Keyboards. Geoff Downes has the chops, but when he plays it, it becomes historic curio that highlights the quaint old keyboard sounds.
'Five Percent For Nothing' was Bill Bruford's short compositional contribution to 'Fragile'. When the band plays the highly abstract jazz-inflected piece, we're reminded that Bill's long absence from the band, and the guys are just going through the motion for the sake of completeness in playing the whole album. They're both strange moments in the concert. By going for completion, the band opens up an emotional space where other members used to sit, and we become aware of it.
And of course, as good as Jon Davison is, the biggest absent friend is Jon Anderson. Having seen his solo show last year, there were moments I reflected on him not being in the band. Last time they were here without Anderson, it seemed to open up new possibilities. This time through it seemed more of a sad absence.
I Worried About Alan White
In previous occasions, Alan White was the rock solid time-keeper, giving tremendous impetus to the music. This night made me wonder a bit, what with the slowness the start as well as the drum sound not being as prominent and powerful as last time. He just didn't quite sound like ALAN WHITE, the guy who has that big sound on 'Instant Karma' as well as the thunderous fills on 'Drama'. Last time I saw Yes, I walked away feeling like he played the best. This time I felt worried for the first parts of the night, like maybe he was under the weather or something. It just didn't have the same sort of oomph as last time.
And that makes you worry. Bands slow down over time. It's inevitable with maturing and ageing. The flash and sizzle gives way to considered deliberation, but a more prosaic explanation is that people grow old. While the band laboured through the early part of 'Close to the Edge', I really thought "jeez, is the end of Yes nigh?"
It reminded me of Peter Banks' death. It did.
When the pace finally picked up - thankfully - the usual bump-and-grind came back. I guess intimations of mortality is part of great art but for a moment there, I really worried.
Steve Howe And The Mid Range Honk
One of the most interesting things about Yes if you're a guitar geek like me is how Steve Howe changes guitars. It's rare that somebody plays 3 prestige semi-acoustics, let alone the Fender double neck slide guitar and the Line 6 Guitar on the stand. Across all the guitars he plays, there is one thread to the sound that marks out his tone and it's this mid-range honk. A lot of guitar players - especially guys given to distortion and overdrive cut the mids. That scooped mids on the guitar is the sound of metal, and this the big difference why Yes just won't sound metal, even with all the furious riffing.
Because Steve Howe plays these semi-acoustics and usually with a clean tone, he can keep the mid-range in there. In turn, the midrange is everywhere in his tone across all the guitars including the solid bodies. There are moments he sounds unlike any other player on the planet - it can only be Steve Howe playing. Then there are moments his tone even sounds like Frank Zappa's clean tone on 'Zoot Allures', when he gets on the red Stratocaster. When he hits the harmonics, they have this ballsy mid tone that gives them a bloom and sparkling full-ness. It's quite the master lesson in tonal control.
Steve Howe has also changed the solo he plays on 'Owner Of A Lonely Heart'. It's thankfully, no longer the weird country lick melange but a closer approximation of the angular pentatonic played by Trevor Rabin on the original. It sounds a lot better now. The 80s hyper-modernism of the song is brought back into sharp focus.
More Rickenbacker 4001
Chris Squire on the other hand had fewer changes of bass guitars than last time. Most of the night he was on his Rickenbacker 4001 bass. This is most likely because most of the material played was from the era where the Rickenbacker was central to the sound. If there was one upside to the setlist, it was that there was plenty of Rickenbacker 4001 action and as you know, I like it that way.
I think his particular 4001 is a 1964 model. That thing is like 50years old now, and still going strong.
The man who described playing in Yes to be like being a trapeze artist where precision is everything, played and sang with about precision as humanly possible. That alone is always a kind of spectacle.
'Heaven AndHell Earth'
I'm not a fan of the new album that came out earlier this year. It doesn't really kick up a pulse and it doesn't really go in for prog rock ideas much; instead, it gives way to a kind of MOR/AOR vibe which frankly doesn't fit in with the rest of their oeuvre. I was going to write about it, but I was so disappointed I shelved doing the crit on this blog. It was like a moment where the band took a turn and went the other way to where you wanted them to go (which is how I feel about Peter Gabriel after 'So').
Be that as it may, as they say in mobster movies, the 2 songs from the album played live sounded great. The band certainly plays this material live with much more conviction than you hear on the album. They sounded a lot more interesting and complex - exactly the way Yes is supposed to be. I'm beginning to think that maybe the mix on the album is not representative of the music that's actually on it.
Play Any 3 Albums
It's highly unlikely but I want them to move outside of the early 70's a bit. If it's wish-casting, I'd like to hear 'Relayer', 'Drama' and 'The Ladder' in its entirety. I'd even settle for 'Tomato' or 'Open Your Eyes'. If the encore was 'Roundabout' or 'Starship Trooper' after doing that, I'd be more than totally okay with it.
There's nothing so life affirming as hearing the music you loved growing up, played live by the very people. There's definitely something comforting in hearing something you know like the back of your hand, visiting the emotional landscape you trod so often in your adolescence. At some point that's all the pleasure you need, all the comfort you need. Should Yes be breaking new ground even unto this point in their careers? Is that a fair kind of expectation? Should their fans have to step up to new horizons with this band? It sure makes one wonder.
In the mean time, a night of Yes going through mostly their older portions of their successful catalogue is a night of majestic nostalgia.
What's Good About It
What's good about Yes this time through is that Jon Davison has become more accustomed to the music and found his voice within the music. The last time I saw them, Davison had just arrived and was singing in only his fifth gig with the band. The band have also tinkered with the arrangements so even the really familiar tracks had little interesting wrinkles in them.
The light show was better than last time and they sound really good in the State Theatre. It just seems to be a good fit for the music and the sound and the space. With a few odd moments, the playing is still superb. Overall, the band still has the nimbleness of turning on a dime as well as the rigorous discipline of playing complex passages with precision.
More importantly the gestalt of Yes music was very much alive and present, and so the sonorous passages of their most splendiferous amazing wonderful extraordinary beautiful music, came alive. There were no metaphorical clowns, no tigers, lions or bears. Just the glory of Yes music.
Jon Anderson quipped last year "Squire said, 'we don't do reggae'". It's a very good thing that Yes play on the beat, uncompromising and hard. It's the way rock bands ought to be.
What's Bad About It
They started a little slow with the opening number 'Close to the Edge'. It was so noticeably slow that I thought it was going to be a really long night. At one point, after the choral section of 'Close to the Edge' you could hear Geoff Downes push the beat to speed it up but the band fell back to the slower pace straight after the organ break. Sometime during the late part of 'And You And I' the band sort of woke up and started playing at a more familiar speed. By the time they were into 'Siberian Khatru', they were playing with gusto, which was a relief.
It was probably more 'interesting' than 'bad', but for the first twenty minutes it really felt like it was going to be a 3hour concert of Yes-In-Slo-Mo.
What's Interesting About It
With any Yes concert, you always find the choice of material interesting. This concert featured a full in-order play through of 'Close to the Edge' and 'Fragile'. In-between were a couple of tracks form the new album 'Heaven And Earth', while the encore was 'I've Seen All Good People' and 'Owner of a Lonely Heart'.
On the one hand, it was a selection that really favours the golden era of the early 70s when they made their mark, with a couple of current pieces and the hit single from the 1980s. You can't fault the choice, but on the other hand you're left wondering about all the other great moments. There's effectively nothing from 'Tales from Topographic Oceans' through to 'Drama', then 'Big Generator' through to 'Fly From Here'. That's a lot of great music they're not addressing at all. They can't please everyone, but they didn't really go out of their way to please anybody but the Baby Boomers and one token gesture to their 80s success.
That being said - and I don't mean the above as negatively as it might sound - it was a setlist of beautiful Yes music. The highlight of the night was surely the material off 'Fragile' where the most progressive arrangements were brought to life. 'We Have Heaven' segueing into 'South Side of the Sky' was masterfully executed and the vocal arrangements really blossomed beautifully in those sections. 'South Side of the Sky' is one of those rarer gems of Yes' catalogue that doesn't make it on to the set list as often as say, 'Roundabout' or 'Heart of the Sunrise', so it was fully contextualised against the rest of 'Fragile'. The downside is that you wonder if they couldn't find a way to play more grand things than 'Cans and Brahms' and 'Five percent For Nothing'.
For Absent Friends
'Cans And Brahms' and 'Five Percent For Nothing' were the oddities of the night. 'Cans and Brahms' was in its heyday, Rick Wakeman's spot to show off his chops and the latest sounds of his arsenal of Keyboards. Geoff Downes has the chops, but when he plays it, it becomes historic curio that highlights the quaint old keyboard sounds.
'Five Percent For Nothing' was Bill Bruford's short compositional contribution to 'Fragile'. When the band plays the highly abstract jazz-inflected piece, we're reminded that Bill's long absence from the band, and the guys are just going through the motion for the sake of completeness in playing the whole album. They're both strange moments in the concert. By going for completion, the band opens up an emotional space where other members used to sit, and we become aware of it.
And of course, as good as Jon Davison is, the biggest absent friend is Jon Anderson. Having seen his solo show last year, there were moments I reflected on him not being in the band. Last time they were here without Anderson, it seemed to open up new possibilities. This time through it seemed more of a sad absence.
I Worried About Alan White
In previous occasions, Alan White was the rock solid time-keeper, giving tremendous impetus to the music. This night made me wonder a bit, what with the slowness the start as well as the drum sound not being as prominent and powerful as last time. He just didn't quite sound like ALAN WHITE, the guy who has that big sound on 'Instant Karma' as well as the thunderous fills on 'Drama'. Last time I saw Yes, I walked away feeling like he played the best. This time I felt worried for the first parts of the night, like maybe he was under the weather or something. It just didn't have the same sort of oomph as last time.
And that makes you worry. Bands slow down over time. It's inevitable with maturing and ageing. The flash and sizzle gives way to considered deliberation, but a more prosaic explanation is that people grow old. While the band laboured through the early part of 'Close to the Edge', I really thought "jeez, is the end of Yes nigh?"
It reminded me of Peter Banks' death. It did.
When the pace finally picked up - thankfully - the usual bump-and-grind came back. I guess intimations of mortality is part of great art but for a moment there, I really worried.
Steve Howe And The Mid Range Honk
One of the most interesting things about Yes if you're a guitar geek like me is how Steve Howe changes guitars. It's rare that somebody plays 3 prestige semi-acoustics, let alone the Fender double neck slide guitar and the Line 6 Guitar on the stand. Across all the guitars he plays, there is one thread to the sound that marks out his tone and it's this mid-range honk. A lot of guitar players - especially guys given to distortion and overdrive cut the mids. That scooped mids on the guitar is the sound of metal, and this the big difference why Yes just won't sound metal, even with all the furious riffing.
Because Steve Howe plays these semi-acoustics and usually with a clean tone, he can keep the mid-range in there. In turn, the midrange is everywhere in his tone across all the guitars including the solid bodies. There are moments he sounds unlike any other player on the planet - it can only be Steve Howe playing. Then there are moments his tone even sounds like Frank Zappa's clean tone on 'Zoot Allures', when he gets on the red Stratocaster. When he hits the harmonics, they have this ballsy mid tone that gives them a bloom and sparkling full-ness. It's quite the master lesson in tonal control.
Steve Howe has also changed the solo he plays on 'Owner Of A Lonely Heart'. It's thankfully, no longer the weird country lick melange but a closer approximation of the angular pentatonic played by Trevor Rabin on the original. It sounds a lot better now. The 80s hyper-modernism of the song is brought back into sharp focus.
More Rickenbacker 4001
Chris Squire on the other hand had fewer changes of bass guitars than last time. Most of the night he was on his Rickenbacker 4001 bass. This is most likely because most of the material played was from the era where the Rickenbacker was central to the sound. If there was one upside to the setlist, it was that there was plenty of Rickenbacker 4001 action and as you know, I like it that way.
I think his particular 4001 is a 1964 model. That thing is like 50years old now, and still going strong.
The man who described playing in Yes to be like being a trapeze artist where precision is everything, played and sang with about precision as humanly possible. That alone is always a kind of spectacle.
'Heaven And
I'm not a fan of the new album that came out earlier this year. It doesn't really kick up a pulse and it doesn't really go in for prog rock ideas much; instead, it gives way to a kind of MOR/AOR vibe which frankly doesn't fit in with the rest of their oeuvre. I was going to write about it, but I was so disappointed I shelved doing the crit on this blog. It was like a moment where the band took a turn and went the other way to where you wanted them to go (which is how I feel about Peter Gabriel after 'So').
Be that as it may, as they say in mobster movies, the 2 songs from the album played live sounded great. The band certainly plays this material live with much more conviction than you hear on the album. They sounded a lot more interesting and complex - exactly the way Yes is supposed to be. I'm beginning to think that maybe the mix on the album is not representative of the music that's actually on it.
Play Any 3 Albums
It's highly unlikely but I want them to move outside of the early 70's a bit. If it's wish-casting, I'd like to hear 'Relayer', 'Drama' and 'The Ladder' in its entirety. I'd even settle for 'Tomato' or 'Open Your Eyes'. If the encore was 'Roundabout' or 'Starship Trooper' after doing that, I'd be more than totally okay with it.
2014/11/15
Maybe The Work Ethic Thing Is Not Universal
The Weird Things You Think Up When You've Got The Flu
I had the flu (again) and was laid out for a couple of weeks. I'm really only recovering my lungs this week and I've had a lot of stuff to think about at work so I haven't been writing much here. Apologies for the break in transmission.
Anyway, in-between the moments of headaches and coughs and general ordinariness, I had this insight that maybe our society putting too much emphasis on the work thing. It sounds crazy, I know, but here's the thing. We've come to the point where our government has so demonised the 'dole bludger'. that they don't want to hand out unemployment benefits to somebody under 30 for 6months while they are unemployed. The work-for-the-dole programs are presented as this great idea where these young long term unemployed people are made to work for their unemployment benefit money.
But when you think about that, you have to ask if that job they're doing is absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, then why isn't the government paying proper money to get that done by proper professionals? It's paradoxical because if the government had that kind of money it wouldn't have to cut the dole. So what you have is the government insisting that some random, context-free 'work' be accomplished when in reality it might not be relevant to the economy except it makes some people feel better that lazy people are being made to work.
What if the point of life isn't work and getting money? Maybe we're looking at unemployment benefits all wrong. Maybe what the dole really is, is a kind of dividend we pay out to members of our society based on the increasing efficiency of our society? Consider for a moment that the rewards for work are not distributed in any kind fair way.
Take Gail Kelly, the retiring CEO of Westpac who reportedly got paid 12.8million dollars this financial year. No wonder she's quitting. That's like winning lotto. With all due respect to her fine acumen as CEO and qualifications, there's no way her efforts were really worth that much. And her effectiveness probably had a lot to do with turfing people out of jobs to make Westpac a more efficient organisation. Which is to say part of her $12.8million remuneration involved putting people on the dole and taking their share of the capitalist money pie.
This sort of distorted sharing of the profits of business is happening all over the place. If there's such a disconnect between work and the rewards, I don't see why we have to pretend that it's all about the effort. Let's face it, somebody can only work so many hours the work-for-the-dole program, as hard as they can, for as long as they can, but nobody is ever going pay that person $12.8million a year. That $12.8million is simply not related to effort or dedication or skill. How can we then pretend that it represents fair value for Gail Kelly's work?
It's more rational to say, at some point there is no connection between work and its rewards. It's just circumstance and chance. So why do we insist that the connection applies to unemployed people all the time? It seems more delusional to think that the merits of the work ethic applies to everything all the time, given the extreme ends of employment and unemployment.
And it's not like the unemployed come from nowhere.
Economic Rationalism Always Kills The Golden Goose
Try this for an example. Imagine a person working for company A, manufacturing product B. Company A decides to move production to China. This is good for the company because the production of B gets cheaper. usually, it's like the fraction a cost, so let's say there's a 75% saving right there.
So let's say they're generous and Company A might pay out a redundancy to the worker which effectively buys them out for length of time until they allegedly find another job. But the person might not find another job because all the companies are moving their manufacturing to China to get that 75% saving. Pretty soon you have all these workers who lost their jobs who can't get another equivalent job, because those jobs disappeared too. Pretty soon, they're the long term unemployed.
Meanwhile, company A has pocketed the 75% saving in manufacturing costs and posted it up as profit. Shareholders lap this up because it represents 'efficiency' and 'productivity'. So in one fell swoop, they've made an unemployed person in their own country and then given that job to somebody halfway around the globe, and pocketed the change. This has more in common with killing the golden goose; but this kind of thing has been the mainstay of managerial theory for something like three decades. And they keep coming up with reasons why this is somehow going to lead to a better economy while in fact the middle class has collapsed in America and is sinking in Australia. it's clearly self-serving corporate nonsense.
What most governments say when this happens is that these people have got to be re-trained. In reality the retraining programs often fly in the face of what actually happening in the market place for jobs. If a person loses a join the manufacturing sector, then it's cheap and easy to retrain them for something else in the manufacturing sector. If the entire manufacturing sector is shrinking overall, then it's just musical chairs where somebody misses out on the chair each round. At some point the government has to re-train these workers out of their sector which is going to cost more time and money.
The point of all this is to say, corporations regularly export the jobs and collect the difference as profit. They even devise ways to pay taxes by going international and feeding earnings through some weird tax scheme in tax havens like Luxembourg. It seems incredibly inequitable to lump the government with the costs of the unemployment imported from the third world, then complain that the government is spending too much money on welfare. If the business lobby don't like this so much, they should just bring those jobs back and employ people. It always amazes me that the ALP don't just tell the business people this, but instead go on about working with businesses and hand over subsidies which are bribes to stop them killing these golden geese.
I had the flu (again) and was laid out for a couple of weeks. I'm really only recovering my lungs this week and I've had a lot of stuff to think about at work so I haven't been writing much here. Apologies for the break in transmission.
Anyway, in-between the moments of headaches and coughs and general ordinariness, I had this insight that maybe our society putting too much emphasis on the work thing. It sounds crazy, I know, but here's the thing. We've come to the point where our government has so demonised the 'dole bludger'. that they don't want to hand out unemployment benefits to somebody under 30 for 6months while they are unemployed. The work-for-the-dole programs are presented as this great idea where these young long term unemployed people are made to work for their unemployment benefit money.
But when you think about that, you have to ask if that job they're doing is absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, then why isn't the government paying proper money to get that done by proper professionals? It's paradoxical because if the government had that kind of money it wouldn't have to cut the dole. So what you have is the government insisting that some random, context-free 'work' be accomplished when in reality it might not be relevant to the economy except it makes some people feel better that lazy people are being made to work.
What if the point of life isn't work and getting money? Maybe we're looking at unemployment benefits all wrong. Maybe what the dole really is, is a kind of dividend we pay out to members of our society based on the increasing efficiency of our society? Consider for a moment that the rewards for work are not distributed in any kind fair way.
Take Gail Kelly, the retiring CEO of Westpac who reportedly got paid 12.8million dollars this financial year. No wonder she's quitting. That's like winning lotto. With all due respect to her fine acumen as CEO and qualifications, there's no way her efforts were really worth that much. And her effectiveness probably had a lot to do with turfing people out of jobs to make Westpac a more efficient organisation. Which is to say part of her $12.8million remuneration involved putting people on the dole and taking their share of the capitalist money pie.
This sort of distorted sharing of the profits of business is happening all over the place. If there's such a disconnect between work and the rewards, I don't see why we have to pretend that it's all about the effort. Let's face it, somebody can only work so many hours the work-for-the-dole program, as hard as they can, for as long as they can, but nobody is ever going pay that person $12.8million a year. That $12.8million is simply not related to effort or dedication or skill. How can we then pretend that it represents fair value for Gail Kelly's work?
It's more rational to say, at some point there is no connection between work and its rewards. It's just circumstance and chance. So why do we insist that the connection applies to unemployed people all the time? It seems more delusional to think that the merits of the work ethic applies to everything all the time, given the extreme ends of employment and unemployment.
And it's not like the unemployed come from nowhere.
Economic Rationalism Always Kills The Golden Goose
Try this for an example. Imagine a person working for company A, manufacturing product B. Company A decides to move production to China. This is good for the company because the production of B gets cheaper. usually, it's like the fraction a cost, so let's say there's a 75% saving right there.
So let's say they're generous and Company A might pay out a redundancy to the worker which effectively buys them out for length of time until they allegedly find another job. But the person might not find another job because all the companies are moving their manufacturing to China to get that 75% saving. Pretty soon you have all these workers who lost their jobs who can't get another equivalent job, because those jobs disappeared too. Pretty soon, they're the long term unemployed.
Meanwhile, company A has pocketed the 75% saving in manufacturing costs and posted it up as profit. Shareholders lap this up because it represents 'efficiency' and 'productivity'. So in one fell swoop, they've made an unemployed person in their own country and then given that job to somebody halfway around the globe, and pocketed the change. This has more in common with killing the golden goose; but this kind of thing has been the mainstay of managerial theory for something like three decades. And they keep coming up with reasons why this is somehow going to lead to a better economy while in fact the middle class has collapsed in America and is sinking in Australia. it's clearly self-serving corporate nonsense.
What most governments say when this happens is that these people have got to be re-trained. In reality the retraining programs often fly in the face of what actually happening in the market place for jobs. If a person loses a join the manufacturing sector, then it's cheap and easy to retrain them for something else in the manufacturing sector. If the entire manufacturing sector is shrinking overall, then it's just musical chairs where somebody misses out on the chair each round. At some point the government has to re-train these workers out of their sector which is going to cost more time and money.
The point of all this is to say, corporations regularly export the jobs and collect the difference as profit. They even devise ways to pay taxes by going international and feeding earnings through some weird tax scheme in tax havens like Luxembourg. It seems incredibly inequitable to lump the government with the costs of the unemployment imported from the third world, then complain that the government is spending too much money on welfare. If the business lobby don't like this so much, they should just bring those jobs back and employ people. It always amazes me that the ALP don't just tell the business people this, but instead go on about working with businesses and hand over subsidies which are bribes to stop them killing these golden geese.
2014/11/13
Degrees For Sale
What Happens When You Price Education Too Specifically
Yes, it's one of those Schadenfreude moments when you find out that there's been a solid trade in essay-writing for overseas students to pass courses. The problem runs in all sorts of directions so there is no wonder that the universities that have only just found out that the problem is endemic are not making any public comments. I can't imagine the University of Sydney would be up to offering any kind of insightful or helpful remarks - it's just not in its nature (like the scorpion in that story involving a frog and a scorpion)
Central to the problem is that if you sell a course for 'X' Dollars, then you've effectively made a commitment to give the buyer something in exchange for the price tag. The assumption in all this is that what is being sold is "an education". The absurdity this is notion is brought forward when the said student then has to pass exams to prove they have learnt what was allegedly taught by the educators. It's clearly not like selling an object.
Worse still, the universities offering the course are biased, if not outright incentivised, towards failing students. If the student fails, then the university stands to gain even more money because the student has to pay again to do the course and try to pass. University admins in this country like to make friendly noises but it would be hard to navigate the alleged support being offered for foreign students. If one were a foreign student with little life skills and experience, the admin may be more intimidating than a source of assistance.
Worse still, the universities charge double what they charge Australian students for the privilege of studying in Australia. You can read that as the universities are raking it in, but you can also read that as the universities are selling out their reputations in exchange for money. This is pretty well understood by the students themselves; both Australian and overseas students know that the overseas students are specifically paying double because they're getting the name of the institution. I was told once by a local Law student that he welcomed this because the worse english writing skills of the foreign students pushed up his position in the assessments.
"What's not to like? They get to be Sydney Uni grads and I get to look better in my future job application," he grinned. That was 10years ago and he's done well for himself, she as proven correct.
The point is, the overseas students aren't meant to be the good students the universities build their reputations upon. They're meant to be the cash cows.
Imagine your lot then as a foreign student from a country where English is not the first language. You're over the barrel for a lot of money; if you fail, you're up for even more money when you try to re-take the course; and the university course wants you to write a bloody essay in English no less. While I don't condone cheating, you can see why there would be a demand for somebody to write the essay for these students.
Given all that, I don't see how the universities can be too loud about the fact that foreign students pay for help to get their assignments in. It certainly doesn't look like it's supposed to work any other way. No wonder they haven't discussed it out in the open and kept a lid on the topic for years.
"You Gotta Pass Me, I Paid For This"
The flip-side for students in courses paying expensive fees an going into debt is the expectation that they should get something for their money. The unfortunate consequence of that at a certain university in Canberra is that nobody fails. Nobody fails because if an academic should fail somebody, they open themselves to being queried by the student "but I paid for this. You have to pass me." This would lead to a lot of embarrassment for the institution, so nobody dares fail anybody in the context of fee paying students. Things sure were different back when fees were low. Students took your lumps in accordance with their efforts, and it was a lot more honest.
You sort of wonder how institutions really feel about handing out passes to students whose efforts would have not made the grade in a more honest marking context. You sort of wonder how long the institutions can maintain their reputations if they keep pushing out subpar graduates because they took their money. People are rabbiting on about how the commercialised cheating service of essay-writing is a problem but deeper down, the institutions have a lot to ask of themselves as to how they got into this mess. One would imagine the honest conversations are fairly strained and pained.
Then again, I'm happy it's not my immediate problem. Certainly the prospect of raising fees for tertiary education is not going to help alleviate the problem.
Yes, it's one of those Schadenfreude moments when you find out that there's been a solid trade in essay-writing for overseas students to pass courses. The problem runs in all sorts of directions so there is no wonder that the universities that have only just found out that the problem is endemic are not making any public comments. I can't imagine the University of Sydney would be up to offering any kind of insightful or helpful remarks - it's just not in its nature (like the scorpion in that story involving a frog and a scorpion)
Central to the problem is that if you sell a course for 'X' Dollars, then you've effectively made a commitment to give the buyer something in exchange for the price tag. The assumption in all this is that what is being sold is "an education". The absurdity this is notion is brought forward when the said student then has to pass exams to prove they have learnt what was allegedly taught by the educators. It's clearly not like selling an object.
Worse still, the universities offering the course are biased, if not outright incentivised, towards failing students. If the student fails, then the university stands to gain even more money because the student has to pay again to do the course and try to pass. University admins in this country like to make friendly noises but it would be hard to navigate the alleged support being offered for foreign students. If one were a foreign student with little life skills and experience, the admin may be more intimidating than a source of assistance.
Worse still, the universities charge double what they charge Australian students for the privilege of studying in Australia. You can read that as the universities are raking it in, but you can also read that as the universities are selling out their reputations in exchange for money. This is pretty well understood by the students themselves; both Australian and overseas students know that the overseas students are specifically paying double because they're getting the name of the institution. I was told once by a local Law student that he welcomed this because the worse english writing skills of the foreign students pushed up his position in the assessments.
"What's not to like? They get to be Sydney Uni grads and I get to look better in my future job application," he grinned. That was 10years ago and he's done well for himself, she as proven correct.
The point is, the overseas students aren't meant to be the good students the universities build their reputations upon. They're meant to be the cash cows.
Imagine your lot then as a foreign student from a country where English is not the first language. You're over the barrel for a lot of money; if you fail, you're up for even more money when you try to re-take the course; and the university course wants you to write a bloody essay in English no less. While I don't condone cheating, you can see why there would be a demand for somebody to write the essay for these students.
Given all that, I don't see how the universities can be too loud about the fact that foreign students pay for help to get their assignments in. It certainly doesn't look like it's supposed to work any other way. No wonder they haven't discussed it out in the open and kept a lid on the topic for years.
"You Gotta Pass Me, I Paid For This"
The flip-side for students in courses paying expensive fees an going into debt is the expectation that they should get something for their money. The unfortunate consequence of that at a certain university in Canberra is that nobody fails. Nobody fails because if an academic should fail somebody, they open themselves to being queried by the student "but I paid for this. You have to pass me." This would lead to a lot of embarrassment for the institution, so nobody dares fail anybody in the context of fee paying students. Things sure were different back when fees were low. Students took your lumps in accordance with their efforts, and it was a lot more honest.
You sort of wonder how institutions really feel about handing out passes to students whose efforts would have not made the grade in a more honest marking context. You sort of wonder how long the institutions can maintain their reputations if they keep pushing out subpar graduates because they took their money. People are rabbiting on about how the commercialised cheating service of essay-writing is a problem but deeper down, the institutions have a lot to ask of themselves as to how they got into this mess. One would imagine the honest conversations are fairly strained and pained.
Then again, I'm happy it's not my immediate problem. Certainly the prospect of raising fees for tertiary education is not going to help alleviate the problem.
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