Oh, wait, that was exactly what it involved…

I know that most of my readers aren’t cricket fans but I choose to believe that this is due to ignorance rather than indifference*. I’m firmly convinced that if you are a generally a sports fan and someone takes the time to explain the Byzantine rules of cricket to you that you will become a fan of the game. If you’re not a sports fan, well I can’t help you.

Yes, it is slow paced. Yes, it can go on for days – by design. Yes, you can score 500 runs and still lose.  All of these things are true and they are only a few of the things that make cricket such a compelling sport.

And The Ashes? Well, the Ashes is cricket at its finest. Every couple of years since for the last 120 or so, the finest that Australia and England have taken the field for the summer to battle over the eponymous trophy, purportedly the ashes of a bail that represented the death of English cricket. A demise brought on by the first defeat of the English side by filthy colonials in 1882.

Over a century later, it is still the biggest sporting rivalry between England and her erstwhile colony. So much so that for several glorious weeks in December and January, ‘the cricket’ rules. Staff was pretty scarce on the ground at work on the first day of the Adelaide test last Friday and those of us cursed with meetings or other unavoidable work engagements spent a lot of time refreshing scoreboards on our phones.

Having lived in each country, having one son born in each, I have the advantage of neutrality in the series. This may be all the more advantageous this time around, because it looks as if barracking for Australia is going to be a hard slog.

And if all this doesn’t convince you to care about The Ashes, well, many of us know that The Ashes are “vitally important for the past, present and future safety of the Galaxy”.

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*That’s right, insulting your readers is bound to keep them coming back.

There is, perhaps unsurprisingly, very little good music about cricket. But Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy managed to put together a cracker of a side project concept album. The Duckworth Lewis Method is remarkably uncampy and a good listen for both the cricket fan and music lover alike. The Duckworth Lewis Method is available from .

It’s probably a good thing, especially for a middle class socialist like myself. Rudd was plummeting in popularity – he was ineffective in getting the Labor message out there and pretty effective at being a dickhead. And it certainly won’t hurt blokey Australia to have a woman running things for a while.

But most of all, it is good news because Gillard may be the only hope to keep this guy from taking power after the next election:

This budgie smuggling buffoon is Tony Abbott, the bastard child of George W Bush and Sarah Palin. And the leader of the opposition Liberal Party.

“Laugh and think, this is Australia.”

It’s a shame about Rudd, but I have been impressed this week with Labour Environment Minister, and former Midnight Oil frontman, Peter Garrett. Want to know why? Check out my monthly post at The Greenists.

Images:

Gillard

Abbott

Pick up some of Peter Garrett’s greatest hits with Midnight Oil’s “20,000 Watts R.S.L.: Greatest Hits” available from .

Ah, footy. For a couple of years now, I’ve been trying to develop a passion for the game with only minimal success. Why bother, you sensibly ask? A couple of good reasons. First of all, tea time conversation topics. I work for a pretty ‘blokey’ school and was advised early on in my employment to choose a team as it would make Monday morning tea conversations flow a lot more easily.

True that. Most of the words bouncing around the walls of the tea room on Monday morning are ones like ‘Crows‘, ‘Power‘, ‘Cats‘, ‘Magpies‘, and so on. Over the last couple of years I’ve been able to learn the jargon well enough to feign interest, but I still don’t care that much about who’s atop the ladder or the weekly Crows crisis.

Secondly, and more importantly, I’m on a mission to give my kids a true blue upbringing despite being the children of immigrants. They’re boys. Aussie boys like sports. Aussie sports are cricket and footy (at least in SA and Victoria). Now we’ve got no problem with cricket, I took to cricket straightaway. It’s baseball, more or less, so no problems. (No worries.)

But this damned football, or footy as the locals call it, is just a bit too bizarre for my taste. Far too much punting. And I don’t understand why they haven’t developed the forward pass. I mean, I know Australia tends to lag a bit behind their North American and European cousins in adopting technology, but the forward pass has been around since 1906.

Whatever. We need a team. How to pick a team if you don’t really care for the game? Well, I figured it out – let the kid decide.

Now, without getting too inside footy, we’ve got a couple of AFL (major league) clubs in Adelaide – the Crows and the Power – both of whom suck. They also play in one of the worst stadiums I’ve ever seen and charge an obscene amount of money to sit in the rain and watch bad teams lose badly.

But we’ve also got the South Australian National Football League, a collection of local teams that would be kind of homologous to a AAA baseball league. They play at smaller ovals around the city, charge $10 for adults and nothing for kids and, best of all, let you go out on the pitch during the quarter breaks and kick your ball around. The latter, for a two year old, is the clincher.

A couple of weekends ago, Boy Z and I headed off to watch the Sturt Double Blues play host to the Glenelg Tigers, the two closest clubs to our house. I made the decision before we went that whoever won this game would be ‘our team’.  But while we were watching, I had a moment of genius  – ask the boy who he liked.

“Boy Z”, I said, “the blue ones are the Blues and the black ones are the Tigers. Who do we like?” Maybe an unfair question, because Boy Z knows that ‘tigers’ are fierce giant cats and ‘blue’ is just the colour of our Mazda hatchback.

“Ti-ers.”

Ti-ers it is my boy. Ti-ers it is. We’ve got ourselves a team.

We’ve been to a handful of games now and everything is now Tigers. He wants to wear his ‘Tigers’ shirt every day. We’ve hunted down ‘Tigers’ socks, although a few sizes too big. Stupid Australian sizes. He sleeps with his ‘Tigers’ football. We have endless conversations about the next time we’re going to see ‘Tigers football’. (Answer – the next time it isn’t raining on game day).

And I’m actually starting to like the game myself.

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Image credit:

Glenelg Tigers

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Due to my connection to the place, I’ll always listen with a tender ear to any band from Athens, Georgia. But Laminated Catis pretty special, regardless of where they come from. There seems to be a bit of a resurgence of Sixties-esque garage psychedelia happening right now. I’ve been hearing a few bands that sound like they were the spawn of 13th Floor Elevators. These Athenians, however, are the best that I’ve heard, seemlessly blending psychedelia with fuzzy grunge guitar. Laminated Cat’s “Umbrella Weather came out last week on Garden Gate Records and is available from . If nothing else, Jeff Tweedy fans have got to love the Loose Fur reference.

But that’s not what I came to tell you about. Came to talk about China.

Xenophon made the front page of The World’s Worst Newspaper™ last week when he launched a campaign on food security. He’s worried about how much of Australia’s food is imported and that much of it is deceptively labeled as “Made in Australia”. He cited China in particular, pointing out that we already import 7% of our food from the Asian superpower, who also happens to be Australia’s largest merchandise export market. As he told the ‘newspaper‘, “If we become reliant on one country (China) that can be unhealthy. If we don’t keep our primary production up then there is a vulnerability in having to rely on another country for supply, whether there is a supply chain problem or a political dispute”.

I’ve got no real problem with China in general. They’re clearly the up and coming super power, poised to take over from a beleaguered America. And why not? The West has had its shot for the last couple of centuries. We’ve not done a bang up job of it. Maybe we’ll be better off with our Chinese overloads. Sure, they’re not that into human rights but they don’t seem as disposed to spreading their particular political philosophy than were their American and British predecessors. In fact, China just seems perfectly content just spreading cheap computers, shoes and plastic toys.

The latter is what I’m unhappy about. I’m a bit bothered by the fact that so much of what I buy comes from China. It isn’t environmentally sound, there are major issues with safety and if you want a cautionary tale of what happens when you ship all your manufacturing to China, look at the American economy.**

I understand why most manufacturing has shifted to China. I don’t like it, but I understand. I don’t want to pay twice as much for my iPod either. But why food? Australia produces enough food to feed Australia. Hell, we export food – $11.5 billion dollars worth in 2009. Why on earth do we need to import Chinese garlic, onions, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, oranges, cashew nuts, jams and juice. We can grow all of these things in Australia.

It’s a rhetorical question. I know the answer. Because it’s cheaper to grow an orange in China than it is to grow an orange in Australia. Just like it’s cheaper to grow an iPhone in China than it would be in Australia. Without pesky food standards and unions and minimum wages, China can produce anything Australia can at a fraction of the price. And Woolies likes cheap food and higher profit margins.

But you know what? I don’t want Chinese oranges. For environmental reasons, for food safety reasons and just because I want my orange, if it doesn’t come from my tree, at least to come from my country. I want to make sure that if the Chinese decide they don’t like us anymore that I can still have an orange with my breakfast. As Xenophon said, “Now imagine that Australia depended on China for 50 or 60 per cent of our food. Protecting Australia’s food security is as important as our national security.”

Damn straight, Senator.

So, as an experiment, I’m not buying anything from China for the month of May. In fact, I’m going to do my damndest not to buy anything that wasn’t grown or made in Australia for the month of May. And a week in, let me tell you, that isn’t easy. If I keep up this experiment, I won’t be buying any consumer electric goods. And Boy Z and Not Max will have to make due with the toys they’ve got***. And my wardrobe will remain much the same that it was in April. Because we don’t make clothes, toys or iPods in Australia. Even food shopping this week was a challenge. It took me twice as long and cost me about 10% more. But I did manage not to buy any Chinese food and the only foreign grown food that I bought were frozen mixed berries. I got a bit of a bollocking for buying the crappy Australian feta rather than the imported Greek, but it’s the principle of the thing and if I have to struggle through bland feta to insure my country’s food security, then buy god I’m willing to make that sacrifice. And apparently Dr. O’C will have to as well.

And I discovered that Xenophon was right. Food labeling is deceptive. Food manufacturers love to slap the “Made in Australia” logo on their product and then, in the fine print:

“Packaged in Australia with local and imported ingredients.”

Classy.

I’m not stupid. I know that global free trade is a reality and it’s not going anywhere. I don’t even know that it should. But when it comes to food, I think my adopted country should be self-supporting and I’m going to do my small part to see that it is.

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*And the not so bright.

** If my American readers care to argue with me then 1) go to the Rust Belt and have a look around and 2) do a bit of research about how you owe that several trillion dollars to.

***Actually, Boy Z triggered this whole exercise. His new favourite line of conversation involves ‘where’ things come from. I’m pretty sure he wants to be reminded who gave him a certain toy or when we got his latest football. But I’m a pedant or, depending on who you ask, a bit of a dick. So I answer the question literally and I started to become distressed about how many times the answer was ‘China’.

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Image credits:

Xenophon

China

Australian Made

If you like “Chinese Translation” the rest of M Ward’s “Post War” won’t be a disappointment. Buy it from .

We arrived the day before ANZAC Day. I hadn’t a clue what an ANZAC was, nevermind why he/she/it/they had a day. All I knew was that when I managed to wander my way down to the closest grocery store to the faceless suburb into which we had landed was that it was closed up tight.

Two years later I’m not quite as lost. Inexplicably I’ve still got Dr. O’C. I’ve got a two-and-a-half year old budding fascist dictator in Boy Z and his rapidly growing lieutenant, Not Max. I know my away around my adopted city like I’m a native. I’ve got a job that I love a car that Dr. O’C keeps bashing up and a place to lay my head with a sea view when I wake up. I even know where to buy a carton of milk on ANZAC Day.

More importantly, I’ve come to feel at home in my home. I don’t feel Australian, but I feel comfortable among the Australians. I feel a part of Australia, that I can participate in things Australian. I feel a part of, something that I haven’t in the six and a half years since I left the country of my birth.

And I can tell you about ANZAC day. It’s a day of remembrance for the Australian and (less importantly) New Zealand Army Corps that fought at Gallipoli in World War I. The Battle of Gallipoli involved allied British and French troops landing in Turkey in a futile attempt to take Constantinople from the Turks. It involved a significant Australian presence and something like 8,000 Australian casualties. They tell us on ANZAC Day, that Gallipoli helped to established Australian national identity. I find it a bit odd that a thrashing at the hands of the Turks marks the beginning of Australian national consciousness, but it’s one of those idiosyncrasies that make Australians such a winsome people.

So the groceries stores are closed and there are dawn services around the country and in Gallipoli. And we have biscuits. And football. And I’ve learned, on this my third ANZAC Day and the second anniversary of my arrival in this enchanting corner of the world, that if you get out of the way and let it, life keeps getting better from one year to the next.

April 2008

April 2009

April 2010

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A lot of people pay out old Rolf Harris and I think it’s a shame. He’s a national treasure, an Australian troubadour, he’s painted the Queen, he’s a Commander of the British Empire, for the love of god! And there can’t be much more Australian on ANZAC Day than dancing around the living room to “Waltzing Matilda” with the ANZAC Day Clash on in the background. Seriously, buy “The Best of Rolf Harris” from .

Inside was the biggest pair of chicken breasts I’d ever seen; each of them was upwards of 400g (just shy of a pound). This had clearly been the Pamela Anderson of chickens.

My thoughts immediately turned to foul play. Hormones. Has to be hormone treated chickens. I know that cattle manufacturers in the U.S. have been adding exogenous growth hormones to their beef stock, clearly Australian chicken men have been doing the same thing.

I’ve become increasingly concerned about eating meat. With beef in particular there are serious environmental and health concerns that I’m struggling to square with my lust for red meat. With a wee one or two in the picture, I decided to cut back a bit – a couple of meatless meals a week. However, faced with these H cup chicken breasts I made the decision to go even further – three maybe four meatless dinners a week – and to actively seek out ‘organic’ meat when we did go carnivorous.

But then I remembered that I am supposed to be a scientist and thus should probably do a bit of research before coming to a conclusion based on a single observation. So off I went in search of the biological explanation for voluptuous chickens.

It didn’t take long. The chicken industry in Australia  is quick to point out that neither hormones nor antibiotics are added to their birds, that the increase in breast size that older consumers are seeing is due only to selective breeding. Being an anti-corporate leftist, I tend to disregard anything that industry advocates say as propaganda, but the most recent survey by the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry confirms these claims. In their tests, Australian chicken meat is 100% free of exogenous hormones or antibiotics.

Now, I’m fully aware that most of my readers are American, so what about Yank chicken? As in Australia, it is illegal to use growth hormones on poultry in the U.S. and based on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s testing, American chicken is largely free of hormones and antibiotics.

Looks like chicken is clean. Giant chicken breasts are just a product of some very clever breeders. See, genetics is awesome. Good news for the carnivores among us. There are, of course, still a lot of issues about how poultry is raised and the waste generated by chicken farms. Farms? Ranches? And beef is a whole different kettle of fish, so to speak. American and Australian beef has been shown to contain a whole cocktail of exogenous hormones, at least one of which is used illicitly by bodybuilders and professional baseball players and has been shown to cause DNA mutation at high doses.  

I know that the vegetarians out there are saying to themselves, “well just don’t eat meat, problem solved.” But it isn’t so simple.  When it comes to hormones, it isn’t just beef that we need to worry about. Soybeans, the most readily available protein replacement, contain high levels of an endogenous non-steroidal hormone known as phytoestrogen. These hormones may be good for women, having been linked in some studies to have a mild preventative effect against some types of breast cancer. But for men, and particularly boy children, phytoestrogens may do more harm than good. When Boy Z turned out to be intolerant to standard infant formulas, we stayed away from the soy alternatives. This was due to studies that have been done demonstrating that a high soy diet and/or soy based infant formulas have “adverse effects with respect to carcinogenesis, reproductive function, immune function, and thyroid disease.”  There is a lot of controversy around the soy studies, but I tend to pitch my tent in the better safe than sorry camp when it comes to feeding my kids.

So, chicken is fine. Beef is probably not great for a number of reasons, but man I love a good steak. Soy is OK in reasonable doses. So what that leaves us with, I suppose, is that balanced diet approach that health professionals are always on about.

God, I hate it when the obvious answer is the best one.

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I love Kimya Dawson. Her music on the “Juno” soundtrack helped to make that film and her 2006 album “Remember That I Love You” is just fantastic. She got her start in the band The Moldy Peaches, whose self-titled album is available from .

Image credits:

Chickens feeding

Hens

Chicken shed

I know book banners and I know what they look like and sound like. I grew up in a small town on the steaming pine flats of north Florida. This particular town was famous for two things. One, Ted Bundy killed his last victim there. Two, they banned Chaucer from the schools. When I was a Freshman in High School, my county school board banned a humanities text book that contained excerpts from Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” and Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”. That’s right, 5^th century B.C. Greek drama and 13^th century English frame tales were too dirty for our developing minds. A local preacher’s wife was helping her daughter with her homework one day and came across the mere mention of the existence of sex in Lysistrata and the “The Miller’s Tale” – a farcical story in verse that includes medieval fart jokes – and went all histrionic. She got her husband on to the case, who used his own little bully pulpit to get a rise out of his Southern Baptist congregation. As these things do in small towns, in a matter of weeks there was fury from the community about their precious innocents being forced to read such smut. Smut that 99% of them hadn’t bothered to read. Smut that the vast majority of them couldn’t pronounce, never mind spell.

The irony, of course, is that in the late 80’s most of these delicate flowers were having more sex than Aristophanes could ever conceive of and the jokes I heard in the halls of my school would have caused Chaucer to blush. But logic and reality tend to be irrelevant when a community is stricken with a righteous fury and the school board, with a cowardly unanimous vote, caved under the pressure and banned both the humanities book and the original text.

At the time, I didn’t know Greek comedy from situation comedy and  I didn’t know that Chaucer was the father of English literature and laid the path for seven centuries of words to come. I was 15 and had bigger issues to deal with and I just didn’t really care about the ban.  I was young and still labored under the illusion that elected officials knew best and had my interests at heart. I’ve always been a little bit ashamed that I wasn’t angry at the time, that I didn’t get angry until I went away to college and read “Lysistrata” and “The Canterbury Tales”. It was at that point that I realized what had been done to me by the preachers and the school board.

I have no problem with anyone’s religious beliefs, none whatsoever. Largely because what anyone else believes is absolutely none of my business. If you don’t want to watch a movie or read a book or listen to a song because it flies in the face of your religious beliefs, that’s fine. If you don’t want your child to read a book or listen to a song because it flies in the face of your religious beliefs, that’s fine, though you probably ultimately do your child a disservice. Nonetheless, none of my business. But the Christianists that banned Chaucer and Aristophanes went a step too far, they didn’t want anyone to read, watch or listen to something that offended their faith. This is where I have a problem. This is where your religion offends me. This is where your beliefs tread on not only my beliefs, but my freedom to practice them. This is where it becomes my business.

I learned that in my first year of a private Christian college in South Carolina. I learned that I should be angry about what had been done in my hometown. I learned about book banning. It didn’t just happen in that small town in north Florida. It had happened throughout history when zealots with a modicum of power and more than their fair share of influence convinced an ill informed population that a book threatened their morality. And I got angry. And I wrote an essay for a literature class about book banning and book banners. My professor encouraged me to send that essay to my local newspaper and they published it as a guest editorial.

My small salvo in the war against book banning got me my first job as a writer. The surprisingly progressive publisher of our local paper gave me a summer job as an intern reporter. I spent two summers reporting on the local politicians. It was during those two summers that I became a liberal, that I began to question authority, that I learned the dirty truth about small town politics. During those two summers I got to know small town, small minded politicians who are so convinced that their personal morality is right that they are willing to force it on everyone else by any means necessary. I learned that if people wouldn’t listen and change, these people of will litigate their world view. There are lots of book banners on school boards and county commissions in small towns around the country, particularly in the South. I know them, I’ve worked for them and I’ve worked against them and I have had enough of them.

Now most of the time, these people don’t get far in politics. But every now and again one of them is clever enough, glib enough or charismatic enough to climb the political ladder. Sometimes they get elected to the State legislature, sometimes they might be elected to the House of Representatives. Occasionally one of them becomes governor or even a Senator. Increasingly, these small-minded proto fascists are making a dent on the national stage. Recently they’ve made their way on to the U.S. Supreme Court and into the White House itself. Things look a bit better after the latest American elections, but these folks are like bad pennies.

And I’ve learned that it isn’t just an American problem. Australia has a dubious history of censorship as well. As author Frank Moorhouse put it in an ABC Radio National program from 2006:

But the truthful joke about that period, and I’m talking up until the early 70s, was that if the Martians had landed in Australia and read our literature they would not have a clue how the species reproduced. There was not a clue in any Australian writing about how reproduction occurred. And of course as young people we were bereft of information about how to reproduce or how…most of us were trying not to reproduce.

But book banning is still alive and well in Australia today. In 2006, the Australian government refused classification to two books, “Defence of the Muslim Lands” and “Join the Caravan” by Abdullah Azzam. The Australian government is concerned that these two books may incite people to acts of terrorism. I guess my small town school board in the 80’s was worried about us thinking about sex and flatulence. Presumably advocates of banning the Harry Potter books were concerned about their children becoming witches and wizards. Today it is terrorism, the pornography of the 21st century. It is always something, but there is never a justification for censorship.

The American Library Association has a list of suggestions of what you can do to fight censorship, keep books available in your libraries, and promote the freedom to read as well as a disturbing map of book bannings and challenges in the last couple of years in the U.S. Whether you’re aware of it or not, censorship is alive and well in the United States and around the world. Anyone who loves the written word has an obligation to do something about it.

Personally, I’m going to hit the grass roots. I’m going to try to instill a love for the written words in my son the same way that my parents instilled it in me. By reading to them every day*.

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Talking Heads’ “77″ is available from .

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*Yes, I know that’s Dr. O’C and not me reading. But I do lots of reading too. I also do most of the picture taking. And the cooking. And the bulk of the work around the house…

What is fixing to get banned, however, is that dummy (pacifier) stuck in Boy Z’s mouth.

-Number of cigarettes smoked: Incredibly, still zero.
-Number of Panadol taken in the vain effort to stop the pounding in my head: 17
-Hours spent wondering just what the hell I am doing: Oh, thousands.

And I was at work for half the day. I made the mistake, however, of taking Boy Z down to what I can best describe as the third circle of hell – Westfield Marion Shopping Center. I learned two things in hell. One, after two weeks of school holidays every Australian parent takes their bored and sugar crazed children to the mall so they can wreak havoc on someone else’s property. Two, I will never go to Westfield Marion Shopping Center again.

You know what else I learned today? To a 19 month old boy, the best way to drink water – the only way to drink water – is out of his Papa’s empty energy drink tin.

Jacob wants a story. My fellow Okeefenokeestani (his demonym, I can’t take credit for something so clever) was enchanted by my ‘literary quality‘ posts of a wee while back and is demanding more. Two problems. One, I only have a limited number of stories unless I start cold making shit up. Two, these literary quality posts aren’t the easiest things to write – they take a little time. More than you get during a typical toddler nap or corporate lunch break.

I’ve actually got a story that I’ve been thinking about telling for a while. But it’s a long one and one that I’m not sure I’m ready to tell yet. One of my goals during this time that I’ve got away from the grind is to sit down and write it out to see how I feel about it. So there you go, Jacob. Hang tough.

For today, however, you get photos. Tomorrow will be our one year anniversary in Oz. I was going through my iPhoto library and was amazed to see how much the little guarana-head above has changed in that year. I was also struck by the amount of time we spend at the beach – that is why I moved here. I can’t think of a better illustration of our first year in Australia than a year at the beach.

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“Everyone, Come Outside!” is the sophomore effort from self-described Cincy art-poppers Pomegranates. The record came out earlier this month and brings to mind some of the Swedish pop that turns my crank. Good stuff. They’re in the midst of a U.S. tour or check out the new album at .

Probably a good thing, as the day of the DJ is long gone and I don’t really have the stomach to be a talk radio host. You see, after a week spent listening to Savage and Levin, I was all prepared to come out today guns a-blazing in my best impression of a talk jock. I was ready to spew vitriol and poorly researched opinions masked as fact. I was poised to skewer the American health care disaster, was itching to tear down the lies that have been spread surrounding tax rates in countries with socialized health care, was formulating a conceit about the mythical ‘Middle Class’ in America.

But then as I was walking to catch the bus this morning I asked myself “What’s the point?”

When I write political rants I basically only get myself upset. For the most part I’m preaching to the choir and if you disagree with me I’m not arrogant enough to believe that you’re going to change your mind. What’s the point? Post another picture of the boy and move on.

I mean, I know that I pay a lower tax rate in Australia (26% versus 28% plus) then I would (and did) in the US. It’s hard to gauge the quality of health care, but I know that the infant mortality rate is lower in Britain (4.8 per 1,000) and Australia (4.4) than it is in the US (6.3). I also know that life expectancy is higher in Britain (77.7) and Australia (79.8) than it is in the US (76.1). I know that, if you’re an American taxpayer, you’re getting screwed – that most of your taxes are going to pay for a ridiculously bloated and largely unnecessary military rather than the basic necessities for your survival. I know that I’ve gotten outstanding, compassionate medical care in all three countries. I know that the only difference is that in Australia and Britain I don’t pay for it and they make house calls.

I know all these things because I’ve experienced all three systems. I know what I prefer and I know that I wouldn’t even consider moving back to my homeland unless they sorted out the health care mess. I would much rather pay taxes that get reinvested in the health care system than pay insurance premiums that just line the pockets of insurance company executives. I can’t imagine going back to the States and relying on the fickle rules of some insurance company or my employment status for my son’s well being.

It’s not just health care – there’s education. In the Western European style social democracies, one of the responsibilities of the government is to offer affordable tertiary education to those who desire and have earned the opportunity. Therefore, university costs are heavily subsidized. In fact, a university education was free until very recently in the UK.The cost of a college education has skyrocketed in the last couple of decades in the U.S., pricing a lot of people out of the market and leaving the rest massively in debt after four years. I know from first-hand experience. It’s important to me that my kids have a shot at a university education, but another reason I would be reluctant to return to the States is that we should have started saving about five years ago in order to pay for it.

Let’s assume, as Dr. O’C prays, that Boy Z becomes a scholar. What would it cost to send him to the finest higher education institution in the three countries under discussion? We’ll focus on public institutions*, assume resident tuition and include all estimated living costs (food, housing, etc. all in U.S. dollars). To get a Bachelor’s degree from Oxford University would cost us about $45,000. The same degree from the Australian National University in Canberra would leave us about $41,000 poorer. But, if Boy Z decided to head to the Sodom of the Left Coast and got his degree from UC Berkeley, we’d be $114,000 in debt.  Even if he went to my alma mater, the finest university in the South – The University of Georgia, we’d still be down $68,000.

I’ve gone further with this than I intended – but with less ranting than originally planned at least. And this is where I ask again – what’s the point? If you’re reading this and aren’t living in Britain or Australia (or Canada or Sweden or France or Germany or Latvia or basically any other industrialized country) and you’re now convinced that a touch of socialism is a good thing, chances are you’re not packing your bags.

I guess the point is that the people who are telling you that socialized medicine doesn’t work are either liars or idiots. Or both. The people who are teabagging and telling you that higher taxes will break the back of the middle class are either dangerously deceitful or morons. The fact of the matter is that you, those of you who are residents of the US, are getting the shaft.

To be 100% honest, I really don’t think it’s going to change. This idea – that taxes and government are bad – is so ingrained in the American psyche that I don’t believe even the new administration with Democratic majorities in both houses is going to be able to sort it out. I did the same thing that a lot of you did – 52% in fact – voted for Obama and hoped that he would be able to change what is a broken system. I know it’s early, I know he has a year or so to take the big steps that need to be taken before the 2010 congressional races start up.

But listening to these guys on the Right and listening to the people that call in to their shows, I just don’t think it is going to happen.

Well, there’s some upbeat Friday reading for you, gentle readers. Y’all have a good weekend, you hear?

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* Just for kicks, I checked out Harvard – $208, 000.

The Killers’ “Hot Fuss” is a great record and is available from .

Image credits:

Maypole

Socialism cartoon

Socialism poster

I think we had already planned to emigrate to Australia by the time this ad came out and even if we were still on the fence, it wouldn’t have had much of an effect. It was standard tourist office tripe – all primary colors and Great Barrier Reefs and outback bars and overdone accents – but I’ve got to give them credit for the tagline. We were moving to Australia not for Ayers Rock, but for the quality of life on offer.

All of this has absolutely nothing to do with what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about our new house. We’re moved in, in the sense that all of our stuff is there and it is as fantastic as I remember it being when we first visited. The lustre remains intact. It’s big and spacious with lots of wood and glass. It’s an Australian house – designed for outdoor living in a Mediterranean climate. It’s surrounded by greenery (more like brownery after a hot, dry summer) lending the illusion of seclusion despite being moments away from a major university.

And there’s an orange tree.

Now, I grew up in Florida prior to the collapse of the citrus industry there, so I’ve had some oranges in my time. But I’ve never had an orange like the one I pulled off the tree on moving day. It was pulsing with life, sweet as honey and bursting with an intoxicating liquor.

Moving day was one of those predictably beautiful Australian days. Vivid sunshine, 84°F with a light sea breeze fluttering up into the hills. Nothing out of the ordinary. But standing there looking over the Adelaide plains, sticky with orange pulp and slightly tipsy on citric spirit, I wondered to myself just why the bloody hell anyone would live somewhere other than right here.

Australia’s been good to me – financially, socially and personally – my little family is flourishing. The only niggling gripe that I had to chew on was our housing situation. The only thing keeping me from writing a post like this was the crushing feeling on my chest that I got everytime I got off the bus in Happy Valley every evening. Stuck in the faceless, endless southern suburbs I didn’t really see the point of having traveled round the world. In Happy Valley I could have been anywhere in the world, there was nothing except the accents and license plates to differentiate the place from Milton Keynes, Markham, Bangsar or Bellevue.  In fact, I could very easily have been in the suburb in which I grew up. I was stuck with the feeling that, despire appearances to the contrary, I hadn’t gone very far in life.

Now, our new neighborhood is still a bit far from the city center and still doesn’t offer the sense of community that I covet. We’re still renters rather than owners. There’s a long upward trajectory yet to travel. But I can see Gulf Saint Vincent from my living room and hear rosellas and cockatoos in the gum trees. I can pick figs from my veranda and bananas over the fence. I can watch the moon rise over the sea and the lights of the city flicker silently and I feel utterly serene.

And I can pick an orange the like of which I’ve never tasted before on my way out the door in the morning. And right now, that’s about as close to perfect as I can imagine.

So, where the bloody hell are you?

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Bright Eyes’ “Lifted Or The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The Ground” is available from Amazon.

Still no internet at the new dream house, so apologies if I’ve not been over to your corner of the internet. I kind of have to fit things in around work. I’ll catch up soon.