The Silo Art Trail

The Mallee area of Victoria is mostly flat country, hot and dry, boring to look at, and often too hot for any comfort.   All the same, it is productive country and grows a big percentage of Australia's grain crop most years. (Not counting drought years.)

Mallee, Victoria, Australia

The Mallee is dotted by tiny towns, towns that have been declining in population ever since horses were replaced by tractors.

It is not an area that lures tourists.  Some towns have simply died, others linger on.  There are abandoned houses, abandoned churches.

Many churches these days appear to need propping up.

Few need actual timber supports, however! 












There are derelict buildings, even in main streets.  This is Rupanyup.

But then there is this gorgeous little building in the centre of the street. That is also Rupanyup.

There is this abandoned home in Patchewollock.

But there is also this joyous piece of art, also in Patchewollock.
















The towns might have become rundown, but the people are still full of life, and they want life back in their towns. One way is to attract tourists.  The Silo Art Trail is a genius idea, and it is successful. In caravan parks a long way from the Mallee, I heard talk of it, and many had either just been, or planned to go.  These are mostly the 'Grey Nomad' travellers, who are happy to have a plan for their explorations, and who have money to spend.

In every small town and tiny village of the Mallee, there is a silo.  When these become paintings, they are very, very impressive.

These are tourists at Sheep Hills.

Sheep Hills was the tiniest town we saw, just a few abandoned buildings, and a pub that must have been nice once.  It did not appear to be in use.





And yet, Sheep Hills has this.

I included the people to give some idea of the scale, even though they are closer to the camera.


Below is at Rapunyup.  These silos are not as tall as most, and yet you can see the vehicle parked close.  Those pictures are big! 

The several councils involved have gone to some effort. There are brochures, there are signs, and some of the towns even appear to have put in brand-new and immaculately clean toilets - a thing of importance for travellers.

Six towns (if you can call Sheep Hills a town) with painted silos.  Other towns with street art and open air sculptures.  They are all deserving of a visit.  

The Mallee Fowl sculptures (left)  are at Patchewollock.

Just a couple of years ago, we visited Minyip.  We were saddened to see it so rundown.  But now, there are new shops opened, and everything seems to have been cleaned up.  While Minyip does not have its own silo art, it is a pleasant place to visit, and does have some street art to admire. 

Brim's silo paintings (above)  were the first.  I think they are the best of all, 

though the photograph above does not show the figures to full effect

due to the sun being directly behind them. 

The visionary councils of the Mallee Silo Art Trail deserve credit.  They have brought life back to their portion of the world, and they have given travellers something marvellous to look at.

They deserve support,  so next time you are in Victoria, make a trip to the Mallee to enjoy the silos.  Just follow the green-marked route.   (But not in the middle of Summer.  It can get very hot there.) 

The Plastic Bag Ban, 6 months on.

So what difference has it made?

For the last couple of months, I have been travelling and checking out caravan parks.  The garbage bins used to be cleanly filled with plastic bags that nicely contained all the nastier and messier type rubbish.  Now, it seems to be half and half loose rubbish and contained rubbish.  (Obviously a lot of people still have their plastic bags and are still using them.)

There tends to be signs on the bins - 'Please bag your rubbish.'   Obviously it is easier and less unpleasant work when rubbish is bagged.

We were inside our van at one place - (Coolamon)  when a willy willy picked up two rubbish bins,  rolled them over and over, and tossed around the rubbish.  Luckily, it happened that the rubbish in those bins had been all neatly enclosed in plastic bags,  quick and easy and clean to pick up and toss back in the bin when the willy willy had moved on.
(A willy willy is a mini-whirlwind. The poor Germans next to us had not seen such a thing before, and were thoroughly alarmed.)




What other differences has it made?

Myself - I do a lot less impulse buying these days.  I buy less from places who do not supply a bag,  and none from dress shops who want to charge. I resent that what used to be free now costs roughly 1000 times of its cost of manufacture.

The back of my car is now messy with bags waiting for use.  That is an irritation.

Is there more or less littering?
It's about the same, as far as I can see. Plastic bags never were a major litter item.  There have always been far more cigarette packs and fast food boxes left lying around

And there is inconvenience.  Only the other day, I heard a women at the supermarket complaining that she can never remember to bring bags.  I guess she bought new ones.  And I guess more and more people are buying more and more new plastic bags, but firmer plastic, bigger, and not as useful as the older, smaller ones that could be folded small when needed, and sealed off with a tie. Try doing that with the 'Recyclable' variety.

And I notice that the checkout staff have started routinely asking if a customer wishes to buy a bag, I guess, like, 'Would you like fries with that?  Are they not making enough money from plastic bag sales then?  Surely it was not, after all, about extra profits!  I had thought it was about appearing to care for the environment.  (Not actually caring for the environment, of course, just appearing to care for the environment.)
 I wonder how the pie graph would look for the reason for this pestiferous policy.

Something like this? 

Or is it little to do with anything like this?  Maybe it was just political wheeling and dealing - that sense was cast aside in exchange for someone's vote on something else entirely. 

Are there more flies now since there are more places for them to breed?   We did see a lot of flies in our travels, but mostly only small bush flies.  It is hard to say whether there were more.

Hygiene at the Checkout:   Dust and germs inside a re-used plastic bag is the customer's concern, but how do the checkout workers like touching numerous increasingly dirty bags as the weeks go on and bags are re-used again and again?  They are worked too hard to slip off to wash hands several times in an hour.

Quarantine. Australia, as it should be, is concerned with limiting the spread of disease, especially fruit fly. But if old fruit is tossed loose in garbage bins, will pests and diseases spread more quickly?  I guess it will take a few more years to find out, and then, of course, how would you sort out this one cause from other causes such as carelessness when importing fruit and other foods?

*** Headlines today, 8th December, 2018. .  South Australia has fruit fly outbreak in the Riverland area.  Now SA was supposed to be fruit fly free, and there are large fines for taking fruit into the state.  Did the lack of plastic bags have anything to do with this outbreak?  It is the first time that I can remember such a headline.  Probably not, but who knows?  

Garden pests:  The TV show 'Gardening Australia.'  The advice was to not put diseased or pest-affected vegetation in the compost, but to enclose it in a plastic bag and then dispose of it in the garbage bin.

A plastic bag!  If we listen to the environmental police,
a sheet of newspaper will do all of the jobs that a plastic bag used to do.  What a laugh! 

___________

They call them 'single use' plastic bags, those ones that were issued free.  Of course, they never were single use.

As a matter of interest, I started keeping a diary of uses of 'single use' plastic bags.

Monday:  In this week I was holidaying at the beach, accommodation, our caravan.

1. A plastic bag was used to contain sandy thongs.  (The 'thongs' are flip flops for those who are thinking of a different sort of 'thong.')

2.  Bin liner. Our caravan bin is a small one, and these little plastic bags are the right size and have the big advantage that they can be easily tied off to contain the rubbish, especially when some will smell after a few days.

Tuesday: 

1. Two taken for shopping.

2. I purchased two fragile ornaments. They were carefully wrapped in newspaper, and then put in a plastic bag for safety. They will stay there, safely wrapped and in a bag until I am home. 

3. Bin liner.

Wednesday:

1. When doing the wash, a plastic bag was used to hold some wet clothing.

2. A sardine can smells horrible, so it was put inside a plastic bag, which was then sealed off before being put in the garbage. 

3. Bin liner

Thursday:

Early morning beach.
The crabs have done their house cleaning.

1. I stuffed a plastic bag in my pocket ready to hold any sea-shells I might pick up.

2. We bought a couple of fast food packs for lunch. A plastic bag made it easier to carry them without dropping. 

3. There were leftovers. I used a plastic bag to keep the food fresh for later use. (It would have otherwise dried out.)

4. A small amount of leftover food stank of onions. A plastic bag sealed off the odour, and it was then put in the rubbish.

5. Bin liner

Friday:

1. A plastic bag was used to hold three books when I visited the Book Exchange.

2. Bin liner

Saturday:

Bin liner

Sunday:

1. We returned home on Sunday, and a larger than usual plastic bag was used repeatedly for unpacking food and other things from the van.

Monday:

1. Used for washing

2. Used for unpacking the van

Tuesday:

1. Used to hold a drink bottle when I went to the movies. (One does not want it leaking.)

2. Used to hold a jacket in case it was cold when I went to the movies.

3. Used to pick up some bread, as the bakers no longer offer them free, and the plastic that a loaf comes wrapped is too flimsy for safety - truly single use.

And that was nine days of re-using 'single use' plastic bags.  Now they are no longer being regularly and automatically replenished, people are going to start either buying them, or running out, leading to a smellier and a messier world. 

Postscript March, 2019

At the supermarket yesterday, I noted that there were far more plastic bags for sale, colourful rolls of the type of plastic bag that can be folded or rolled into very small, and can be tied off when filled with nasty stuff.  In other words, 'single use' plastic bags that used to be handed out for free.

So what has the ban achieved?  More profit for the supermarkets, and we are likely to find ourselves using a purple or yellow bag instead of a grey one.  Wow!

Postscript April, 2019

A chap at the checkout, trolley full of groceries, said casually, 'Whatever plastic bags are needed.'  So how many customers are now simply paying for the bags at 15c each, and accepting the small extra amount as part of grocery shopping?

Another postscript:  April, 2020.  We are now in the grip of a raging pandemic.  How much cross infection occurred with reused plastic bags.  In some areas, the old type of thin plastic bag, always free, has made a return.  In other areas, maybe because authorities are reluctant to admit their mistake, and instead, customers have to pack their own bags.  

Environmentally conscious? Or just pretending?

I am feeling irked right now. In order to be 'environmentally conscious,'  our local supermarkets have banned the supremely useful plastic bag.  You know, the one we get our groceries in, then, almost always,  use again for something else, and finally, use to enclose some smelly rubbish for the bin.  They call it the 'single-use' plastic bag, but they are seldom 'single use.' Nearly all of the truly single use plastic bags are still there, from those flimsy plastic bags for fruits and vegetables, to the black plastic bags that come in rolls at beaches in the hope that dog owners will pick up after their dogs.

So much other plastic that we could do without.  I had a takeaway lunch.  It came in a cardboard box in a paper bag, but the plastic knife and fork I didn't want was in a sliver of plastic. Of course.

If I thought that banning this particular item of all the other plastic we use daily would do the slightest good for the environment, I would not be so annoyed.  Yes, if you are on the coast, it could get into the ocean and a turtle could make itself sick on it.  But I live hundreds of miles from the coast, and as far as I can see, all it will do is increase the unenclosed rubbish that flies breed in, and rats thrive on.

It is the hypocrisy that annoys me most!  It is like they just wave the banner and pretend they care about the environment while not actually doing anything effective.

There are many examples of virtue-signalling about the environment - except that, so often, the overall effect is negative, not positive.  It appears that effectiveness is not important to those who push various initiatives - just the appearance of caring.


A new Recycling system:

For a long time, we have had recycling bins for drink containers as well as other recyclables such as newspapers.  It was successful, recycling rate around 80%,  so they always said,  and it was convenient.

So now, our council has put in, at colossal expense, a much more elaborate system for recycling drink containers. There was publicity, all with a very positive slant, and they say it is 'successful' because people are using it - far more people than I had expected.  That is probably because all of our cans and bottles now cost more to cover the cost of the new initiative, and people can get a refund of 10c each, provided the can or bottle can still be scanned.  So it must not be crushed, and it must still have the label. Does it sound good?  How has it turned out?

The recycling of cans and bottles is now a combination of the new and old systems.  Overall results - around 80%.
But with the new system, people have to keep their cans and bottles intact, they must be conveyed to the recycling centre, (by car, and usually contained in plastic bags)  inserted into the machine, one by one, and the person then claims a refund of 10c each - which involves more time and trouble. 
But people are using it. I guess they don't like being defrauded 10c for every can or bottle they buy.

Others of us consider the small refund not worth the trouble, and still drop the cans and bottles into the recycling bin at home, the way we have for the past twenty years or so.

Overall effect of the new system?  It costs more to the council, it costs more for the individual, it takes more time, and is more of an effort for individuals, for council, and for the retailers where the credits are redeemed.  It has made no difference to the litter around.  The rate of recycling is unchanged.

But it looks good, and that appears to be all that matters.

And maybe a factor is that it is acting as a de facto sugar tax - soft drinks cost more (though so does Diet Coke)  and an alcohol tax - cans of beer cost more. Could that have been a factor in its adoption?  There is always someone pushing for taxes on consumer goods deemed unhealthy, the sort of  'health police' who feel that other people cannot be trusted to make the 'right' choices.

There is actually one unforeseen benefit - at a caravan park, I saw a ragged couple going through the recycling bin and removing all the intact cans and bottles in order that they could claim the refund. It may have been little money for a lot of dirty work, but they explained that they didn't like dealing with Social Security.  So there is one good effect to put against the bad. It has nothing to do with recycling and the environment, however.

Update 28th December, 2018

An article in 'The Australian' today spoke of how it is going. The title -  'Bottle Refund Scheme Loses its Sparkle.' 

In summary:  
* rate of recycling before: 53%,  now 54%.  Negligible.  (A lot less than I had said, but no doubt it varies region by region, depending on how convenient the process is.)  
*Consumers have been charged around $250 million for the scheme,  and have been refunded around $100 million.  So a lot more cost for almost no benefit. 

So in summary, this expensive and unnecessary scheme is a bust - but I suppose it still looks good to those who choose not to do any actual thinking.

The full article, link below.

https://myaccount.news.com.au/sites/theaustralian/subscribe.html?sourceCode=TAWEB_WRE170_a&mode=premium&dest=https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/bottle-refund-scheme-loses-sparkle-with-higher-prices-little-benefit/news-story/996bb5b7765f7f2abcd9485cdfc1a572?memtype=anonymous






Remember 'Earth Hour?'

It started in Sydney in 2007. We were all supposed to switch off all lights for one hour in a year, in order so save electricity and to advertise how virtuous we were in caring for the environment.  Enthusiasm spread, and many cities around the world adopted it.  I never thought it would make any difference except maybe to increase the likelihood of muggings in that hour, so never bothered with it.  It is now over ten years later, and I don't think that many bother with it any more, though it does continue to limp along.

But now, we have 'Vivid,' a festival where light is used lavishly in order to make wonderful effects. It runs not for an hour,  but for over three weeks!  It is beautiful, but what of the electricity consumed?  Even if they use modern lighting that uses less electricity than older types, the electricity consumed makes the amount saved by 'Earth Hour' look laughable.

It is another example of hypocrisy.  It doesn't seem to matter if something actually does good, as long as one can boast about it as if it did.


Trying too hard

Most of us try to do the right thing, but sometimes it is better to understand that recycled goods are not actually worth that much.

*  I am thinking of an old, old lady I knew, fragile skin at risk as she conscientiously scrubs out cat food tins, jagged edged, in order to put them, clean, into the recycling bin, as the council requires.  But a tear in that skin would not quickly heal. There would be extra visits from the district nurse, extra dressings, maybe antibiotics.  For a tin that is worth almost nothing, sometimes less than nothing.

*  On the local news was an item about a family who boasts that almost nothing goes into the rubbish bin. Everything is recycled, including tiny scraps of paper. They were applauded, and obviously thought they were being oh, so virtuous!

But the contents of those recycling bins are sorted by hand, by lines of workers wearing gloves, picking out plastic to put into one bin, glass into another, paper into another. None of it is worth very much, and to pick out every small piece of  'recyclable' is a waste of time and effort. Large pieces, sure.  Tiny bits of paper?  No. All that family was doing was making the job more difficult for the sorters.

*  Some time ago, I saw a feature about those wonderful people far out in the remote drylands of Western Australia, carefully preserving all their glass recyclables. Then it was shipped all the way back to civilisation where it was finally processed.

Sadly, the fuel required and the wear and tear on the trucks and the roads would be far more than the tiny amount that the glass could be sold for. Since then, the market for recycled glass has further collapsed.  No-one wants it.

*  Trucks of recycled goods are sent interstate, or sometimes just dumped. No-one wants it, and those who agree to accept it, charge for the disposal.  There are scandals when it turns out that it ends up either in illegal dumps, or sometimes simply stored - indefinitely. Think fire risk as well as everything else. What has anyone gained? 

Trade and Commerce

There are some things that appear to make no sense at all. Shipping Australian prawns off to Asia to be processed and then returned to Australia. Buying things as mundane as disposable nappies that

come from across the world.  And yet, somehow, it helps the economy.

Washed up

Does it?  It is far from common sense, and far from environmentally friendly when one considers the cost of handling and the cost of fuel used.

There is also the risk of accidents. A ship ironically named 'Efficiency' has lost over eighty containers overboard, now creating a hazard to shipping and a mess onshore. (left)

Imported cars, stacks of containers

But those in authority will not consider these environmental hazards. They prefer to focus on little things that might inconvenience people, but have no actual positive impact on the environment. It is all about the appearance of things. It is hypocrisy.


So what can individuals do that is actually useful? 

One could try thrift, but that is not a modern virtue. Those of us who are older are the ones who re-use rather than buying new. At the same time as the useless plastic bag ban, we happened to have a household rubbish collection day.  People put out their unwanted items, and council kindly collects it for us. And while a lot of it is truly rubbish,  there are also things that only need a coat of paint and maybe a bit of repair, and they are useful again.

One could almost furnish a house from what is left to be collected, and if no-one finds it first, it will be crushed and buried as rubbish. And that waste grieves me.  Surely, if the council was really interested in being 'green,' they would make an effort to allow these things to be re-used, not by the sort of  'recycling' that results in mounds or bales of plastic or glass or paper than no-one wants to buy, but real recycling - re-using.  Making and mending rather than discarding.

So what do we have, right now, in my neighbourhood, left around for those of us willing to recycle in the best way possible?

There are colourful children's toys, appearing new,  numerous chairs, some of them
repairable, two washing machines that appear new, a new-looking fan, presumably no longer wanted,  wardrobes and desks, and plenty of timber for the home handyman.  The items in the picture left are merely those within a few houses of us. There are treasures further afield.

Dirty, with a rusted tap.
Now a garden ornament

The garden bench only needed a bit of a repair and a re-paint

The inside coating was too rough for cooking,
fine as a planter once a few holes were added.   

It is actually the trendies who are so adamant that others should be inconvenienced who are the worst for unnecessary consumption. Throw out the old, buy new.  A coat of paint for that table?  Never.  Second-hand toys or clothes for your special child?  Don't be silly.  There's a piece of standard advice that goes "Check your wardrobe and if you have not worn it in the last year, throw it out."  They have to have the new, the fashionable, the latest upgrade with never a thought that this,  THIS!  is bad for the environment.  

Every new item has to be made, has to be shipped, has to be sold, has to be brought home. And all of this is expense, it causes pollution, and if you think carbon emissions are a sinister new thing, it causes that too.


The economy:

Buying things is good for the economy, we are told. It seems to me that there is something wrong with our way of life if waste is good. Maybe we should even measure how well we are doing by individual happiness instead of production, as I am told a certain country does.

But we have to have 'Growth.'  The GDP must rise every year, and in that cause, our government ensures that we have a rapidly growing population. Australia has one of the fast growing populations in the world, though by immigration rather than by a high birth rate.

But continual growth is NOT good. We are like a person already obese, who continues to eat in order to grow bigger and bigger and bigger until they are useless to themselves and to everyone else.













A new theory of economics is needed

We need a way of managing our affairs that promotes stability, and does not depend on an  ever-increasing population with an ever-increasing consumption of the earth's resources.

Until this happens, gestures like the banning of plastic bags will be just that - futile gestures.

More about plastic bags

Since the ban on plastic bags has come into effect, there have been several commentators pointing out a few relevant facts, such as that the ordinary plastic bag is actually more 'environmentally friendly' than a cloth bag.  And such that re-using bags can result in the harbouring of bacteria and the cross contamination of food.

Craig Kelly,
https://www.facebook.com/CraigKellyMP/posts/946208842240417

Andrew Bolt   "Maximum politics for minimum gain."
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/a-bag/news-story/426e02208ea9545e339886af48760231

And here is an interesting excerpt:

"Assessment of the Potential for Cross-Contamination of Food Products by Reusable Shopping Bags, was conducted by researchers from Loma Linda and Arizona universities. He is the abstract (with emphasis and a link added):

The purpose of this study was to assess the potential for cross-contamination of food products by reusable bags used to carry groceries. Reusable bags were collected at random from consumers as they entered grocery stores in California and Arizona. In interviews, it was found that reusable bags are seldom if ever washed and often used for multiple purposes. Large numbers of bacteria were found in almost all bags and coliform bacteria in half. Escherichia coli were identified in 8% of the bags, as well as a wide range of enteric bacteria, including several opportunistic pathogens.

When meat juices were added to bags and stored in the trunks of cars for two hours, the number of bacteria increased 10-fold, indicating the potential for bacterial growth in the bags. Hand or machine washing was found to reduce the bacteria in bags by > 99.9%. These results indicate that reusable bags, if not properly washed on a regular basis, can play a role in the cross-contamination of foods. It is recommended that the public be educated about the proper care of reusable bags by means of printed instructions on the bags or through public service announcements.

The same study found no bacterial presence whatsoever in single-use plastic bags." 

https://www.facebook.com/dallas.beaufort/posts/10155757485359370

And just a small fact to finish: 
Brown paper bags cost 7 times more in 'emissions' than a plastic bag
Cotton bags cost 327 times more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCL7nKCwtc

So don't criticize those of your acquaintances who claim that what you see as a nice thing for the environment - 'Save the planet' etc,  is maybe not as useful as you thought.   We all care for the environment. So many beautiful places to see, and no-one wants it ruined. But when there are initiatives marketed as helping to 'save the planet,' it is a good idea to first think about whether its overall impact is positive or negative.

Threat? What threat?

In 1996, two British nurses living in Saudi Arabia were convicted of the murder of a fellow nurse, Yvonne Gilford. Like most foreign workers, they lived within a gated, 'secure' Compound. To most observers, their guilt was doubtful, and there was talk of a Saudi security guard seen in the area where the nurses had their rooms.  

The women's motive was supposedly something to do with a passionate lesbian love affair. To most of us, the idea that middle-aged women might murder for passion seems so unlikely as to be ludicrous.  (Gilford was fifty-nine.)  But the Saudi religion is Islam, and Islam has a very odd idea of female sexuality.  

Another possible motive was theft, and one of the nurses supposedly used the credit card of the victim.  

The murderers confessed (under coercion,) were sentenced, one to death by beheading, but both were later returned to Britain. 

Most of the world thought they'd been framed.    

But whether they were guilty or not is not what I wanted to talk about. Some years afterward, I worked with another medical professional, who had lived and worked in the same facility at the same time, and she told me that 'all of them there' were convinced that the accused nurses were undoubtedly guilty, and in a 'wise' sort of a voice, she told me that people will do anything for money.

But what I think is that it would have been too threatening a thought that anyone could be at risk of being framed for murder while in a country with such a different justice system, and far prefer to think that the two were guilty.  They felt safer that way. A lot safer. 

Tommy Robinson

It is akin to the reaction to the punishment of those who fall foul of the authorities because they speak too much truth.  

Tommy Robinson had been harassed for years because he spoke of the damage that the booming numbers of Muslim immigrants were doing to his home suburb of Luton, (London) and to make it worse, he spoke loudly about the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs (usually referred to as 'grooming gangs')  that were ignored for decades by the police.  

He is now in prison on what appears to most of the world to be a remarkably feeble pretext.  



But many, maybe most, people are saying that he knew he was doing the wrong thing and deserved to be locked up. It does not make one feel safe to think that the police and your government might imprison a person for too much truth-telling.  It does not make one feel safe to think that your formerly free and democratic nation is quickly turning into a totalitarian police state. 

We are like the three monkeys when we choose not to see what is happening. 

But it is vital we do see, before our freedom is gone. 

To quote Adolf Hitler - 'The best way to take control of a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed."

The edging toward the loss of free speech is happening in many places.  It is happening through persuasion, through 'education' especially at universities, and it is happening through coercion.  Occasionally, I still see someone say that being 'politically correct' is merely to do with politeness.  But it is far more than that.

When we cannot address the lunacy of having men who claim they are women competing in women's sport at a professional level without being accused of 'transphobia,' when we cannot speak of the ill effects of mass immigration without being accused of being 'racist,' and when we cannot talk of the threat posed by Islamic terrorism without being 'Islamophobic,' then we have lost our free speech.  

For the moment, in most places, criticism is as far as it goes, though even that is enough to  bring most of us into line.  But more and more countries are making 'hate speech' a crime punishable by a prison term. Oddly, this is not being used to control a Muslim imam calling for violence toward infidels, instead it is being used to silence those who criticise those Muslim imams who are calling for violence toward infidels.  

We are well on the way to losing our rights and freedoms, just as Hitler described. 

We must wake up, look around, read those articles many prefer to avoid, do not take as gospel the politically correct waffle you see on the ABC and like media, and start to reassert our rights.  Only if we use our rights will we manage to retain them.  I don't think it is too late.

Declining Living Standards

Declining living standards due to over-population

and making it trendy! 

Due to a rapidly increasing population that is assumed to be inevitable, we are suffering a decline in our living standards.  The intriguing thing is that some of this declining standard of living has been re-interpreted as trendy!  

1. Taking up less space

Heard of  'Tiny Homes?'   They look cute, and are pushed as The New Thing!  It is asserted that one can live perfectly comfortably in a 'tiny home.'  There are TV programmes that have idealistic young couples searching for their special 'tiny home.'  They are pushed as if they were a desirable thing, rather than the squeezing of a family into a far-too-small space. 

They are very like caravans, (or 'trailers' as the American would say,)  though not all are made to be moved around.  There are differences, they look prettier, often with steep roofs,  and they are often worse-designed space-wise.   

There was a TV programme I watched that was touting the virtues of 'tiny living.' It showed the interior of one of these houses.  There was a projecting corner that I could see was made for hitting your head on,  and there was a bed upstairs without sufficient safety railing.  Get up to go the toilet, still half asleep, and an accident would be all too possible.

Left - It looks beautiful and very cute.




The image on the right is little more than a bed on wheels.






I think there must be a deep instinct inside us that sees a cavity and imagines it as a home. 

The image (right)  is of the interior of a 'tiny home.' It looks attractive, but for long-term living?  I think a normal sized home is better.  And imagine the hazards for little children living there!

So 'tiny homes.' All they are is a loss of the living space that we have grown up with, and expect as a matter of routine.

And yet they are supposed to be all the rage?


 Cubicles instead of hotel rooms.

I saw a TV news reports that speaks of a trend in hotels to offer merely bed spaces instead of a hotel room.  There was a common area, where people could sit, and several bed spaces with doors, where one retired to sleep. The rationalisation was that one really only used a hotel room to sleep and could perfectly easily share other facilities with other guests.

Squeezing our houses into smaller areas.

We are firmly told that the house on a quarter-acre plot, with a picket fence and a big back yard is totally out of date. Now city houses are set so close, that one could leap from one roof to the next.  Those houses that manage a backyard at all, have a tiny one.

As a consequence, the way of life of families in the cities have changed. Now conscientious parents take their kids to the park every day so they can have some exercise and outside play.

There are new ways of being a child.  While my generation had space to roam in, today's children learn to line up to take their turn on the Flying Fox. 




There are positives. Children learn to get along with others at an early age.

But I pity them. We had so much more freedom than children do now.  Making our own little campfire and boiling up apples from the apple tree. Having a cubby house under the spreading boughs of an old pine tree. Dogs and cats and horses.

Even in a town, there were areas of free land where the kids would meet each day. Not structured playgrounds, but open areas where no-one cared if you built a bonfire or maybe 'jumps' for pushbikes.  Sliding down the slope on home-made billy carts or playing 'dams' at the edge of the creek.

Getting dirty, being free.  Kids these days are not very free.




We are told that people prefer city living and they prefer living in apartments.  I think it is more that they choose the best they can with the money they have, and that often means a small apartment.


Eating lesser quality food.

Veganism

Old-fashioned vegetarianism is apparently no longer enough. It's been around too long. Now the trendies are declaring themselves 'Vegans'  - not even permitted milk or eggs. It is stated to be 'healthy,' though I doubt it. Humans have evolved as omnivores, and we know that meat is a more efficient provider of energy than plant foods. Look at an animal meat eater, such as a leopard or a lion. It will hunt, eat, and then lie around for hours, even days.  

Herbivores, on the other hand, are forced to graze all day to take in enough energy to sustain themselves. And look at primitives in areas where there is insufficient game to have a good feed of meat now and then. They turn to cannibalism, often of enemies, occasionally of excess wives. Except in desperate circumstances, that is in the past, when people were limited to what they could source locally. These days, vegans have a wide source of foods, and most manage to have enough protein to sustain health.

It is very trendy to be Vegan, and more and more people are taking up that choice, and feeling morally superior because they do.  

How much is it pushed and how much is it chosen? Hard to say, but certainly it is easier to feed an enormous population if they don't want a decent feed of meat most days of the week. 

Eating Insects.

Every now and then, someone will declare that 'with the increasing population,'  we will have to start eating insects, as it is 'no longer sustainable' to be meat-eaters.  There was even an episode of  the cooking reality show, 'Masterchef,'  that featured crickets as part of the menu, and many of the contestants demonstrated eating the things, and nearly all (maybe all?) featured them in their 'dish,' even though it was not stated as a compulsory part of the brief.

I would have loved to see the pep talk they had, off camera, to say just why they had to serve - (oh dear) - crickets! 

Eating all of the animal and all of the vegetable ‘because we can no longer afford to waste.’

On TV,  25^th March, 2018, there was a programme about a chef who liked to cook up odd things to show how he abhors food waste.  Chicken rectum anyone?  Offal, not just liver, kidney and brains, but uterus?  Really?  The bitter parts of vegetables because one should not only eat the edible part. Cabbage leaves, not just the cabbage.  (The reality is that in selecting just those small parts of the animal, he probably wasted far more than the average cook at home in the kitchen.) 

And the commentator obediently said that whatever he sampled was delicious, and was probably making a horrible face off camera!  

There is a lot of talk about 'food waste.'  They invariably blame all of us, but nearly all householders waste very little edible food. 

We do eat only the parts of the food item that are generally regarded as edible.  Banana skins get thrown out, and so do apple cores and orange peel.  Bones, gristle, and often the excess fat of a cut of meat gets thrown out. The only way they can come up with the figures they accuse us of 'wasting' is if they count this as waste, rather than normal food preparation.   



Supermarkets and restaurants, of course, waste far more. 

No waste is good, (actual waste, I mean)  but fretting about it as if we were in the midst of the 1930s Depression?  That only comes about because people are fearful that there will be inadequate food to go around.  

Growing pretend meat in test tubes. 

With the burgeoning population (they always say this, as if there was no choice,)  we may no longer be able to have the area of grazing lands where sheep and cattle graze.  

At the moment, growing 'flesh' in the laboratory is horrendously expensive. It is quite impractical to produce commercial quantities.  The presenter of the TV programme I happened to see,  said that, nevertheless, it would become more efficient and it was 'inevitable' if we wanted to eat meat in the future.  Because why?  Because of our 'burgeoning population,' of course.  

There are plenty of articles about lab-grown 'meat.' Below are just two links to articles. 

https://www.wired.com/story/lab-grown-meat/

https://www.wired.com/story/lab-grown-meat/

So we see declining standards of living because of a burgeoning population.

Mass immigration

But here's an idea. How about we control our population, and then we won't have to tolerate an erosion of our living standards? 

The birth rates in Western countries is already only at, or even below, replacement.  In third world countries, it is very high, and the living standard low.  And so enormous numbers of people emigrate, looking for a better life.  And this is why our population is soaring.

But taking in immigrants does not ease the pressure of population in their home countries. There are always more babies in those countries, especially as in most of the worst areas, contraception is either unavailable or against the religion. 

So now, too much pressure is put onto Western nations, who have to try to cope with the never-ending floods of immigrants, some of whom find it difficult to integrate, and more who choose not to try. 

Instead of accepting millions of new immigrants until we end up as poor and overcrowded as the worst nations are now, we should aim for a stable population for ourselves by a strict limit on immigration, and provide as much education and family planning clinics as possible in their countries of origin. Not many mothers really want a dozen children.  In many countries, they have no choice.

There is nothing wrong in looking after ourselves. I do not want to lose our land to more and more development, I like to see grazing stock, and I want my children and grandchildren to have the option of country living if they choose it.  

Don't be fooled by the pretense that things are merely fashionable when they are disguises for declining standards of living