Corruption in high places

My house has insulation batts in the ceiling, and they seem to work to me, but I’m no expert. Changing the insulation for any reason has never crossed my mind. If it works don’t fix it.

I was contacted on the doorstep by a person I shall call Third Party. Turns out Third Party has a brother who, with a mate, runs a local business installing roof insulation under the Commonwealth Government’s rebate scheme, and would I be interested in having insulation installed effectively for nothing, with the Government’s Rebate Scheme. I advise Third Party I already have insulation and he says ‘No matter, it’s probably crap. I can remove it for you for $175′.

Curious but skeptical, I agree to his brother visiting and providing a quote. The brother and his mate turn up a few days later. One of them goes into the roof cavity through the manhole cover, comes back down and advises me that the insulation should be replaced. They do some quick measurements and punch a few keys on a calculator and draw up a quote which (hey presto!) comes out to $1220, just $20 more than the maximum rebate offered. I say  I’ll consider their offer, but there is a distinctly fishy smell about all this.

Nowhere in their quotation does it mention that one of the conditions for a householder to be eligible for this rebate is that they should not already have insulation installed, although this is specified quite clearly on their website. And nowhere does the quotation allude to a Third Party (brother of one of the installers) who will conveniently be able to remove the existing insulation for a verbally quoted $175. And nowhere on the quotation or the website does it specify any trade qualifications held by the two partners in the business.

I declined their offer to have my insulation replaced for $195, not just because the status quo seems to work fine but also, more than anything, because the whole deal looked very much like a rort of what should be a valuable Government environmental initiative. The so-called regulation of this industry has now been called into question after the deaths of four installers in the last few months. Surprised? No.

Unnecessary pain

In the few days that constitute whatever is meant by the ‘holiday season’, 52 people have been killed on Australian roads, with many more presumably injured, maimed for life, and many many more traumatised by the loss of family members or friends or having to care for the broken bodies of survivors. As cars become ‘safer’ it seems drivings habits just get worse to compensate.

A tanker carrying diesel fuel rolls and destroys three oncoming cars, two young girls killed, their parents critical in hospital with permanently disfiguring scars, and straight away people are blaming the road, not any of the participants. We hear of ‘black spots’, places where accidents have already occurred, and of course it’s always the road conditions, the weather, some external force that has caused the trauma, not the irresponsibility, immaturity, carelessness or recklessness of any of those involved. When will society take ownership of this national tragedy.

Watching the hoons barelling around this town in the old V8 Commodores with their silly wheels and ‘doh-doh-dumb-dumb’ boomboxes swallowing up the boot tells one that something is very wrong in the way these young people learn to drive. I was walking the dog the other day as a hotted up and much polished Falcon growled its way down the 50k/hour street at some speed considerably higher and muttered ‘bloody idiot’ to myself and the dog. A voice chirped over the fence: ‘I agree’. It was an older woman tending her garden and she commented that perhaps none of these idiots have lost a loved one as she had, a family member, to driving stupidity.

How does the message get through? For a started much lunatic driving is inherited from generation to generation, children watching their parents drive, and the influence of peer pressure – you’re a woos if you don’t drive like an idiot. The only solutions I can think of are in education and punishment. As with motorcycles, people learning to drive should have to undertake a formally approved course of driving, not be taught by family or friends. And that driver education should start in the first years of school, not around the time you can get a learner’s permit.

And the punishment should fit the crime. ‘Culpable driving’ should be changed to ‘Murder’. Isn’t wilfully driving a motor vehicle in a manner which kills someone else ‘murder’?

Luxury dinosaurs

What is with The Age‘s Drive’ section? Its pages are packed with ads for cheap, popular cars.

But the editorial content … constantly praising the virtues of big SUVs and disgustingly extravagant luxury cars with all the immature adulation of the Top Gear children’s show. Today we have a road test of a half-million dollar Ferrari, and stories about other absurdly expensive cars that only criminals could afford. Toyota proudly unveils its first Australian-made hybrid this week and not one word about it in the Drive section of The Age.

Motherly love

I get very, very tired of carrying the load of my mother’s depression entirely on my own while I have two brothers who are totally self-centered and expect me to do the lot. Sick of being expected to be chirpy and cheerful on demand like a performing seal. I come away angry and depressed. Just want to scream sometimes.
The Melbourne brother insisted on doing the eulogy at my father’s funeral and commandeered the obituary, yet he never had the time to visit him when he was alive, always tripping off overseas somewhere. It was me who took him in and out of hospital all those times, no sign of the selfish bastard. Not once in the many times my father was in hospital did my brother bother to make the two-hour drive from Melbourne, and yet he had the nerve to stand up at the funeral and gush on about how much he meant. I think the word is disingenuous, maybe not. ‘Selfish’ works, so does ‘grotesquely hypocritical’.

Children overload

While ABC Television should be commended for their efforts in delivering children’s television, it seems to me to be a case of overkill. There are several periods during each day when all three ABC channels are running children’s programming. And where can the sense be in promoting a channel (ABC3) devoted to school age kids which is broadcasting largely when the kids are at school during term-time? Isn’t the only way they can watch the programs be to play truant? Perhaps these hours would be better served by reviving the very large effort the ABC used to put into education programs used in schools. I remember those times well, I used to design educational programs for ABC Television in Hobart in the 1980s before successive governments starved the Corporation of funding and shut down all education programming. Priorities eh?

A gardening post

I was just cutting my lawn and, looking around the garden, I was most pleased to observe progress, especially during these years of drought. There was literally nothing here four years ago, now the house is totally hidden from the street (which is in the background of this shot) by a combination of evergreens, largely pittosporums, along the fenceline in the rear of this shot, and a woodlandish setting of silver birches, surrounded by magnolias, rhododendrons, azaleas, callistemons, banksia, Chinese lanterns, and a number of different grassy species. This is at least the fourth garden I’ve built from scratch, and as a contrast to the last one, this one relies totally on common easily found plants, no great horticultural delights, although there are one or two exceptions to that, such as the Himalayan spruce just visible poking out behind the foreground foliage in the middle background of this picture. I also see it as the second last garden I will build, but time will tell if that is so.

This is partly a reaction against horticultural elitism, something I came up against so often in my years involved in horticultural media. There is a tone in much gardening media that there are many rules to follow, complex botanical names to learn, and your garden should be filled with horticultural wonders and delights. I have always maintained that gardening is all things to all people. A dusty cactus on a windowsill, a garden full of weedy nasturtiums, geraniums and other ‘common’ garden plants, is still valid horticulture, and people should not be brow-beaten into thinking they cannot create an exquisite environment without spending a fortune on landscaping and exotic plants. And on top of that, the garden should be enjoyed, not just worked in, but experienced. Every day I’ll spend some time, just sitting, contemplating, enjoying the birds that the garden attracts, soaking in the green energy. Well, them’s my thoughts anyhow.

This is the garden only four years ago, looking towards the house, opposite direction from the previous shot.

Afghanistan

We hear today the Barack Obama is sending another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. 30,000 units of canon-fodder, largely under-educated young people who joined the forces out of desperation rather than any desire to kill Asians they have no grudge with. I don’t know why it is that America and her allies can’t accept that this is not a ‘winnable’ situation in any sense, and the parallels with Vietnam are striking. The Viet Cong had it all over the Americans because it was their home turf, and they literally undermined the enemy and applied technologies appropriate to the environment. The same applies in Afghanistan, an arid, tough landscape which is best understood by its inhabitants, and with a long and complex tribal history. In Vietnam the allies were supporting a corrupt puppet government, and it is widely accepted that the present Kabul regime is little different, a meaningless puppet government which got into power by rigging the elections. That election should have been the cue for Western powers to get out of Afghanistan, but instead we’ll despatch another 30,000 bodies to the slaughter. Madness.

Herat in 1974

This is Herat in 1974, in the good old days before the Russians or the Americans invaded and left the tribal groups with an arsenal military hardware. All I can see for the future of the American (syn. NATO) adventure is a withdrawal as ugly and embarrassing as the last days of Saigon. And, as with Vietnam, countless lives on both sides will be lost and millions, if not billions, of dollars will have been wasted that could have been spent much more wisely, such as fixing things at home, such as the decent medical care that so many Americans seem to object to, or restoring New Orleans. And why are we only intervening in Afghanistan, when countries like Zimbabwe and the Sudan could really do with regime change if anyone could. It’s all very sad.

Web Shitty

For some years now I have been a customer of webcity.com.au who provide web hosting services. Their prices are reasonable and they are basically reliable. But what I’ve found now is that their support is virtually non-existent. One of the four domains I manage mysteriously went down over two weeks ago, for reasons best known to webcity. For two weeks now I have been trying to get webcity to rectify their fault and nothing happens, all I get is ticket numbers. Fucking hopeless. If it wasn’t for the fact that hosting deals are paid yearly in advance and it would be even more painful to shift to another host, I would dump the pricks right now. I’m wondering what else i can do other than book a flight to Sydney and abuse them face-to-face. Very, very frustrating.

To fill out Webcity’s email support forms and get nothing back but a ticket number is just ridiculous and frustrating. Phone calls get promises, more ticket numbers and no further action. What is wrong with these people?

Found object

While on one of my eternal searches for something in the shed I stumble across a coin. Closer inspection reveals it is not an Australian one-cent coin but an American one. I’ve worked hard to meticulously eliminate reminders of the treacherous Americans who came to trash my life five years ago, leaving a trail of devastation and with without even the courtesy of a simple goodbye. I can eliminate the physical manifestations of their having been messing with my life, but I can never erase the whole shedful of broken promises, of deceit and lies. Innocent until proven guilty is wearing thin. Stupid and naive or cunning and malicious or a mix of both, I’ll probably never know. But I certainly hope they rot in hell. Evil is not a nice thing to be constantly reminded of, even if only by a measly one-cent piece.

A new start

After a lot of stuffing around trying to reconstruct the old blog on my own server I thought I’d just start again at wordpress.com. That was enough effort for now. Next post I might manage to say something.