Saturday Morning Musings - Labor returns to power

Like many, I did not shed tears of blood over Labor's victory in the last Federal election. I felt that the Coalition Government had become stale after nine years in office. A change in Government allows for the evolution of new approaches, something that becomes increasingly difficult as governments age. I also found myself increasingly annoyed by Prime Minister Morrison's unfortunate tendency to select words, express attitudes, that reminded me of areas where I had been in disagreement with the Government's previous approach. There was a sometimes harshness, a lack of compassion, in his words that made me distrustful, that reinforced my concerns that the Coalition Government could not be trusted on matters of individual freedom. 

The success of the "Teal" independents and, to a lesser extent, the Greens surprised me. I have spent a fair bit of time involved in or observing country (now regional) politics. There the primary political context has long been between the Country now National Party, the Liberal Party and independents or, more recently, minor parties. Labor was once strong in country NSW, but that's a long time ago. While I describe my traditional affiliation as Country Party, I have voted independent on many occasions. By contrast, I have voted Liberal once in my life. In my world, the Liberals have been the traditional enemy, Labor less so. 

While some city independents have been successful, Ted Mack comes to mind, it is much harder to run an independent campaign in the city. In the country, voting populations are in discrete pockets within electorates. The city position is very different. Go to a meeting of a local group and your will find that many attendees live outside the electorate. Hand out campaign material at a railway station and you will find that a large proportion of people do not live in your electorate. In the country, a now sadly diminished local media will still carry your material. In the city, the main media is all metro focused making it hard for a candidate from a particular locality to attract coverage, 

The "Teal" position this time was different. Their local identity was important but they campaigned on two popular issues - integrity and climate change - which attracted national media coverage giving them real coverage. And they were well funded to an extent that most independents could only dream of. The end result was a considerable electoral triumph. 

There has been a lot of rather breathless coverage over the results including "Teal" and Green success and the reduction in the vote of both Labor and the Coalition.  I would agree that the results reflect continued demographic change and as well as cultural shifts. but it will be some time before sensible judgements can be made. In the meantime, I have enjoyed watching the new Government start to settle in. 

Fallacies of race and racism in Australia

I have been struggling with the return of racist language and discourse in Australia. It's really taken me by surprise. I thought that we had killed it outside some of those on the left and fringe elements on the right. Now it's back. 

I suppose I should start with a simple point. There is no such thing as a race within homo sapiens. 

DNA analysis shows us that the actual genetic differences between groups of people are small. It also shows us that we all carry mixed genetic ancestry. The Aborigines, for example, carry Neanderthal and Denisovan genes as well as later additions including those derived from the European occupiers. When we come to others such as those from Western Europe we find a complex admixture of genes that reflect multiple migrations and occupations. In a simple sense, we are all mongrels. Why, then, do we still use the term race?

All human beings belong to groups who use terms to describe themselves and others. For example, the term Hindu describes a group marked by religion.  

Those seeking or who hold power within groups use labels to consolidate their position and extend their influence. These labels are applied to those within and outside the group. The BJP promotes Hindu nationalism suggesting that Hindu and India are equivalent. This transforms a religious label into a political label. It also acts to exclude non-Hindus. Further, in pursuit of Hindu nationalism, the nationalists seek to use history including DNA results to establish the history required to support their claims. 

I could use other examples, but hope that I have made my point. But why if race has no meaning is it still important? The answer is complex. 

The idea of classifying people by race came out of the scientific revolution. Part of that revolution was a classification process focused on the identification and classification of different species, leading to the subdivision of humanity into different races. To this was added social Darwinism, the idea of competition within and between different human groups in which the best rose to the top over time. 

Inevitably, those on the top classified themselves as the best and sought to preserve their position. The racial subdivision was never clear cut. If you read Australian official documents, you will find references to the British race and to the Australian race as a variant. The Australian race was seen as superior, but there were concerns whether this could be maintained. 

Once you add in  social Darwinism, you are left with the uncomfortable thought that you might not survive the competition. Writing in the 1930s, the English travel writer J H Curle was left with the uncomfortable suspicion that the Chinese would become the dominant race. 

Racism is deeply associated with fear, In South Africa, fear about African competition for jobs made many European mining and industrial workers support the Boer approach to racial separation. In Australia the same forces played out, this time focused on workers from China and India. It is no coincidence that the Labour movement was the strongest supporter of White Australia to the sometimes distress of the Government in London wrestling with the problems of a multi-cultural Empire. 

 There was a remarkable and sudden transformation in Australia after the Second World War. Partly driven by fear, we must populate or perish,  the country opened its doors to migrants that would come to include migrants from all ethnic groups. Over twenty years, a country whose immigration policy had been based on racial exclusion transformed itself.

Of course there was suspicion of the new arrivals, of course there were examples of ethnic and racial exclusion, most migrant families will testify to that, but it was still a remarkable achievement. By the early 1990s, Australia was celebrating its achievements, This has turned round over the last five years.

One of the measures of this is the rise of racist based movements on the right. They were always there but on the absolute fringes.  The detailed reasons for this are beyond this post, but I want to make a few points. 

There were always fragilities in the social consensus underpinning the Australian transformation. People need time to adjust when faced with fundamental change. They need to feel that the things that they value are valued still. 

In 1957 under the pen name  Nino Cullotta, John O'Grady published They're a Weird Mob, the story of an Italian migrant to Australia. The book became a smash hit, as did the subsequent film. Both book and film are criticized today for some of their attitudes, Those criticising the book miss the point. Published just ten years after the start of the mass migration program, the book bridged the gap between traditional Australian stereotypes and the challenges faced by a new migrants. I suspect that in one blow it humanized the entire Italian migrant community, 

The social consensus underpinning Australia's migrant and multi-ethic success began to break down in the 1990s in the face of constant change. The formation of One Nation in 1997 was a sign of this.

This process has accelerated over the last few years  as those on the left continue to hammer the theme of Australia as a racist society. In so doing, they have recreated a race based debate drawing on overseas events that pits whites against the rest. 

I may say that this is silly, that there is no such thing as race, but by attaching a label you may create the very thing that you are opposing. The War on Terror is a case in point. Now we are seeing the same thing in the rise of white racism, with the label creating the very thing that the attacks are meant to stop. 

I never expected that certain fringe groups that I opposed in the past would become a major threat. I still think that the present position is controllable. However, the threat is there. 

Australia has become a more fragmented society in economic, cultural and demographic terms. Resentments have grown.  Scope exists for a right wing political leader to emerge capable of capturing the different resentments. That leader will not come from the extreme right, but will need to capture some of their views.      

  

 

Setting myself a challenge

I think that I have something like six part completed posts written over the last two months. I know that I should have finished them but events - personal and external - intervened. 

This morning in a an interview with the ABC's Fran Kelly, Federal Communications Minister Paul Fletcher made the point that the business of Government has to go on regardless of current controversies. I immediately said yes!

Like many Australians, I am disgusted by some of the allegations now coming out. Like many older males, events over the last few years have caused me to reflect on my own past. And yet I am very conscious and indeed confused about present change processes, some of which threaten this country's future.  

I have tried writing very short posts focused on one issue but find myself distracted.  I wonder if I can change this? We will see!            

We create the things we most fear - reflections on 13 years of blogging 1

This post is an initial follow up on my last post, Initial reflections on thirteen years of blogging. There I said "Over the next few weeks, I plan to reflect on some of the past events and my associated writing here and on my other blogs". This is the first follow up post. I will keep each post short, centred on  a single idea.

Back on 23 May 2010 in Sunday Essay - threads in Belshaw thought, I provided an update on the evolution of my own thinking over time. I think that the post does draw out some of the evolving threads in my thinking. While my core framework remains the same, my views have continued to evolve.

 One thread in that May post was the way our mental constructs, what I call mudmaps, affect our view of the world. A second was the way that our views can affect the behaviour of others through a process called mirroring. I think that we are in that position now in some of our current debates.

In my brief writing on the "War on Terror", I suggested that the mental construct, the rhetoric attached to it, was misleading. A war implied a structured conflict between two sides. That was not the case. However, in applying the rhetoric and in forcing other people to respond. to it, we actually risked creating a war  by creating the very thing that we feared, a structured response that took the rhetoric and used it to it;s own ends.

I think that we are now in that position in the currently confused discussion on race and racial prejudice with its constant emphasis on the past and current evils of "whites", on the need for society to protect itself from right wing aka white extremism. As someone involved in country politics over a long period who sits to some degree on the right of politics but who also straddles from left to right, I have been amazed at the way that rhetoric and response has created patterns that I never expected.

 In the "war on terror", the West's response helped create the demon so painted. Now, I think, we are doing it again, but in the opposite direction.

Brief Update 28 March 2019

I wanted to provide a brief update before moving on.

Remember in this post I am not talking about whether particular views or episodes but the way in which particular mental constructs, particular forms of rhetoric, can actually create the thing attacked. In this case, the growth of certain right wing political views.

It does become complicated because of the emotional and value overlays involved in discussion. Take some of the discussion and responses around that Al Jazeera sting on One Nation.

Former Al Jazeera journalist Peter Greste called the story unethical. I think that's right. It's like what we have come to expect from certain Australian media outlets. It lowered my opinion of Al Jazeera as a serious media outlet.

At a second level, it told us little that we did not know before, although the sheer stupidity in getting caught is a bit mind-blowing. But then, and you may call this a personal bias, I have long thought of One Nation as distinctly unprofessional and silly. Here former One Nation David Ettridge made a remarkably lucid point.

Interviewed by, I think, the ABC's Patricia Karvelas, he said that the whole thing would have little impact on the One Nation vote because it played into an already established trope, Ms Hanson and One Nation as victim of the main stream media and parties.

I think that is probably right, although PK was a bit incredulous. You see, we are not dealing with a conversation or even a conventional political debate, but views expressed by two groups that are now disconnected. And, my argument is, we have created that second smaller group through the frames we have adopted.     

Monday Forum - rebuilding community cohesion

Today's Monday Forum focuses on one current issue in Australia life: declining community cohesion. As always, feel free to go in whatever direction you want.

Yesterday's post was a parochial one dealing with the proposed redevelopment of Astrolabe Park. This has energised the small Daceyville community. This is another shot of of the Bayside Council information session. The woman on the left is the Council GM, beside her in the jeans stands the project manager for the Sydney Water, UNSW, Cricket NSW and AFL consortium In that post I mentioned that in the few weeks since the protest  started I had met more people in Daceyville than in the previous three years.

On 30 January 2017, Australian social analyst Hugh Mackay delivered the Gandhi Oration on the topic the state of the nation starts in your street. In April 2018 he returned to the the broad topic in a new book, Australia Reimagined. On 17 May 2018 he explored his ideas in an ABC Radio National Program, Conversations with Richard Fidler. This one is on-line so you can listen to his views.

On objective measures, he suggests, Australia has done very well. And yet Australians have become more insecure, edgier: :"We are a society in the grip of epidemics of anxiety, obesity and depression."

"How did this happen? Where did this edgy, anxious, too-violent society come from? This uneasy blend of arrogance and timidity?"

Noting that the problem is not unique to Australia but can be found in other Western countries, Mackay provides various explanations including:

• growing social inequity that affects those involved but also Australians' perceptions of themselves with a growing disconnect between those perceptions and external reality
• rise of individualism creating a me first mentality, a decline in real social connection, a focus on the pursuit of happiness
• a decline in respect for our social institutions
• a growing feeling of powerlessness accentuated by the growing rumble of the three big threats – climate change, international terrorism and the threat of a major global economic disruption.

These things interconnect and feed each other. To Mackay's mind and recognising how little influence we have over broader matters, the solution begins by focusing on repairing and rebuilding those things that we can influence and that starts with our neigbourhood and local community.

What do you think of all this?

The internet: algorithms, bias and the censorship of information

Today's post reflects my own confusions and indeed frustrations about the way that the internet is increasing telling me what it thinks I am interested in, preventing  me from finding what what I am actually interested in. It has become a form of censorship by algorithm.

Let me start with a few examples.

I have a particular interest in New Zealand. I used to go to the Google New Zealand site because its algorithms allowed me to pick up New Zealand pages that I might not otherwise find. That is no longer the case. When I go to tools to limit my search to New Zealand pages only, the site knows that I am from Australia; the only choice I am offered is Australian pages. And this on the New Zealand site. I can no longer find pages or items that I knew were there.

I follow BBC News among others to provide me with an alternative non-Australian view on events. I see a substantial number of Australian stories. I do not know whether or not my news is being tailored by my geographic location. I suspect so.

At the end of last year I spent some time looking at rental, house sales and AirBnb sites in Armidale. Within 48 hours, my Facebook feeds were running ads in all three areas. Are you still looking? I didn't actually object to this, but I was impressed by the speed with which my searches on other sites translated to Facebook.

I use Google image search all the time. That service has become less and less effective. There are fewer and fewer historical photos, more and more current crap, quite a bit of which has nothing to do with the topic. Part of the change is due to increased sensitivity about copyright, part to volume. The problem is compounded by the way in which other sites change and merge. Google closed Panoramio, a hugely valuable site. I downloaded some key photos before the site closed, but not all. Picture Australia, once a key photo site, was merged into Trove with consequent loss.

In a piece on his personal blog, paleoanthropologist John Hawks asked Is Facebook killing science news? I can see his point in that so many people seem to be getting their scientific views from Facebook feeds as opposed to more objective or analytical sources. However, I don't share it.

Facebook is not a news channel, rather a platform for personal opinion and personal sharing. This can create an echo chamber effect and disseminate the false, including some of the strangest conspiracy theories. However, in the end, it is up to people to decide what they read and don't read. They still have access to other sources.

In a way, John is caught on the horns of a dilemma of his own making. He is an effective user of social media, I really value his contribution here, but the platforms he uses so effectively can be used by others.

But that still leaves the problems I have identified, the way in which internet companies are increasingly tailoring their responses to what they think we are interested in compared to what we actually want, the way in which an increasingly crowded internet makes information search difficult, the way in which the combination of legal issues such as copyright interact with structural changes in content provision act to limit choice.

These are the issues we have to work around.

Postscript 4 April 2018

Gordon Smith kindly provided this answer to the conundrum how to access Good sites from other countries. It seems to work:

To find NZ content (for example): go to local Google search web page, click ”Settings” at foot of page (right hand side), select ”advanced search”, change ”region” to ”New Zealand” in drop-down menu. Add search terms at top of the same page. Click blue ”Advanced Search” button.

Alternatively, in the New Zealand case, this link also from Gordon should take you straight there. If you type in railways, for example, New Zealand railways should come up first.  

Postscript 2, 5 April 2018

Just to share with you a frustration from today that links to this discussion. I was writing my Armidale Express column. I wanted some stuff  on the dance summer schools held at UNE. These were quite important. I knew there was material previously available. I went to images first, and the only relevant image now available was on one of my earlier posts. This happens quite a bit.

Mmm. I went to that post because I knew it had some links. All those links were dead. The irony was that in the post I had refrained from copying material because I wanted people to read it in the original. Now I regret that.

I know that I have been blogging for twelve years, but I do struggle a bit with the idea that in a changing internet my blogs are becoming a source of record!. .

Gender equality, gender roles and flexible working arrangements for men

Interesting piece in the Australian Financial Review by Fiona Smith drawing from research by Bain and Company and Chief Executive Women. My thanks to Legal Eagle for the lead.

According to the research, "women who can set their own hours, work from home or are part-time are much more likely to recommend their employers to others, but those "freedoms" have the opposite effect on men."

Men in the same position take the opposite view. They feel unsupported and harshly judged. They take a career hit because they are often regarded as anomalies within current working cultures The differences in attitude are summarised in the chart. The report's core conclusion is that women's choices will be maximised if it is made easier for men who wish to opt for part time or flexible working arrangements.  

I wrote quite a lot in this space several years ago and for that reason was interested in the analysis. I also noted that some women's reaction could best be described as diddums. 

I will leave it to you to read Fiona's piece and the report. However, I thought that I should make some brief observations on the issues involved as a way of clarifying my own thinking, focusing especially on families and child rearing. 

We can think of the problem in terms of three overlapping circles: issues that are common regardless of gender; issues that are specific to women; issues that are specific to men. While the circles overlap, they are distinct.

Families take many different forms. There are single person households, the fastest growing household type and one that is changing the structures of our cities. Then there are share households especially but not exclusively among the young. There are single parent families where child rearing devolves upon that parent, sometimes with help from grandparents or other relatives. This is another category that grew rapidly and is now feeding into the growth of single person households as children leave home,.   Couples without children is another growth category, in part because women are choosing to have children later or (in some cases) choosing not to have children at all. The traditional two parent with children family structure may still dominate the debate, but is now a minority in terms of household types.

Note that I have put all this in gender neutral terms. A single parent, for example, may be male or female. In fact, the first case I came across as a manager which really sensitised me to the issues involved a man whose wife had left him some time before leaving him to bring up the five children on his own. This obviously affected his work and working patterns, leading to what was in effect discrimination. If we look at couples now, while the male/female combination dominates, we also have female/female and male/male combinations with and without children. Penny Wong and her partner Sophie Allouache is one prominent example of female/female with children.  

Flexibility in working arrangements is important across the spectrum regardless of gender, although its importance will vary depending on personal inclination and circumstances. For example, a working single parent who has to balance work and children needs a degree of work flexibility to accommodate the myriad things that come up in a child's life; sport, start of the school term, parent-teacher interviews, sudden illnesses that require the child to be collected from school. The list is almost endless.

Flexibility, however, is not the only need. While much of the discussion and indeed policy making in this area is driven by middle class people in relatively secure jobs in the professions or larger organisations, an increasing proportion of Australians live in a world of often insecure sometimes poorly paid part time, temporary or contract work. In these circumstances, it makes perfect sense, indeed it may be imperative, to trade of flexibility for an enhanced degree of security. Availability of other family members such as grandparents can also be important.

 Within two parent plus child or children families, arrangements again vary. At one end of the spectrum you have high powered couples pursuing careers with sufficient money to delegate a significant child care component to nannies. These couples are usually sufficiently senior for both to have a degree of flexibility in their working arrangements.

At the other end of the spectrum, one partner adopts a full time role. In the middle are a variety of sharing arrangements. However, a common feature is that one parent takes a larger role. Traditionally, this been a female role, although male participation has become more common. Roles may vary over time. Partly perhaps because male partners tend to be older, there seems to be an increasing trend for gender reversal in roles with the women playing the major role initially and then roles switching to allow the female partner to concentrate on her career.

However, it remains the case that women do more than men. The Bain and Company and Chief Executive Women report sits in this space. Increased flexibility in working arrangements for men may allow them to take on a greater childcare role, thus giving women more flexibility.

Whatever the gender of the primary child carer, the role comes with costs including reduced career opportunities, life time earnings and retirement savings that need to be considered. A significant proportion of marriages end in divorce. There are difficulties here with the statistics, but as a rough guide around 28% of marriages entered into between 1985 and 1987 can be expected to end in divorce.This proportion increases to 33% for all marriages entered into in 2000–2002.

In general, the lower earning partner (usually but not always the partner taking primary responsibility for child care) ends up worse off in terms of final retirement resources. I can't give a link here, I am quoting from memory, but this effect was clearly seen in the longer term position of women who divorced following the passage of the Family Law Act in 1975.

Turning to gender specific issues, women's issues are reasonably well covered, men's less well so.

The idea that child rearing is primarily a female responsibility remains deeply entrenched in Australia and among women as well as men. This is partly connected with the fact that women bear the child and are primarily responsible for its initial nurture, but also reflects deeply entrenched social attitudes.

From a women's perspective, this can be seen as both a curse and a blessing in career terms. It's a curse because it reinforces still extant if unsaid prejudices against female employment, thus reducing career opportunities. Regardless of the law, managers may be reluctant to appoint or promote women because they perceive pregnancy and child rearing as reducing flexibility and increasing costs. This can favour a male applicant compared to an equally competent woman. However, it's also a blessing at two levels.

At a societal level, considerable pressure has been placed on organisations to develop ways that will allow women to return to work and to work flexibly while pursuing career advancement. These may be imperfect, but they do exist and are continuing to evolve. At an individual level, women are more proactive than men in factoring pregnancy and child rearing into their career plans because they have to be.

The position facing men who might wish to adopt a larger if not primary child care role is more complicated.

The deeply entrenched societal view about the primacy of women in child care creates very real difficulties across a number of dimensions.

At a work level, there is no real expectation that men would wish to do so.A man who seeks reduced hours or greater work flexibility for child care reasons may experience considerable resistance. There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that men can experience difficulty in accessing existing parental leave provisions even when legally entitled, while the decision to work flexibly is seen at best as opting out in career terms, leading to a career hit.

The figures in the above chart are quite telling. While women's willingness to recommend an organisation increase with work flexibility, men's collapses, from 26% for those who have not worked flexible hours to 11% for those who have worked flexible hours to just 4% for those currently working flexible hours. I don't think it any coincidence that nearly all of us who did play major child care roles when my daughters were at school were self-employed.

The societal view about the primacy of women in child care has other effects. The dominance of women in the daily routines of school and life, I think that this is true for boys as well although my experience is with the girls, creates difficulties for men in simply fitting in. This is compounded by suspicion, especially but not only with girls, about the presence of men, a suspicion that has got worse with the growing concerns about paedophilia. From experience, all this means that the primary child care role can be very isolating if you are a male.

Two further factors are worth mentioning.

The first is the timing effect I mentioned previously, the apparently increasing trend for gender reversal in roles with the women playing the major role initially and then roles switching to allow the female partner to concentrate on her career. Depending on the exact timing as well as the barriers I referred to earlier, a decision by a male to take a more active and especially the primary role can indeed be an effective decision to opt out of a career.

The second factor is the dependency factor. It can be extremely difficult for a man to opt for a bigger child rearing role where that makes him financially dependent on his partner.

Summarising, there is no doubt that the report has highlighted a genuine issue, that both men and women would benefit from the adoption of more flexible working arrangements for men. However, that conclusion has to be qualified in certain respects. To begin with, it is difficult to apply such arrangements to the growing proportion of the workforce in temporary, contract or part time arrangements. The proposal also has to recognise and accommodate the particular difficulties men face in opting for more flexible arrangements. Finally, it is actually hard to see significant change so long as the dominant societal attitude among women as well as men that women have the final primary responsibility for child rearing.

Note to regular readers

I'm sorry for the delay in posting. This post took me longer to complete than expected. 

Social change in Sydney - In memory of Gardens-R-Us

A week back, Gardens-R-Us at Eastlakes finally closed to be replaced apparently by mixed use high rise. I knew that it was closing, but didn't know the story, including the ownership by the Piggins of South Sydney fame.

Gardens-R-Us has been at least a small part of my life since we moved to Rosebery in 2000. It has been my source for plants, seeds, fertiliser and mulch through all my varying gardening phases.

The land was owned by Sydney Water. If you regard Sydney Water as a State owned business whose key role is to make a return on capital then its sale makes sense. If you regard it as a public asset, perhaps not. In any case, the land has gone despite the petitions against the sale.

I used to enjoy Gardens-R-Us. It was a a very nice place to walk through. You started with an indoor area with running water and a bridge through  the greenery and then proceeded on a circuit through different combinations of plants and garden supplies. I loved the herb section. There you could smell and feel.

It's all gone now. The demolition people have moved in. Buildings will replace the open space. If it is high rise, I will be able to see it from my backyard. More broadly, the area I live in is undergoing fundamental change with the light rail coming through. As a heritage area, the little pocket handkerchief that is Daceyville will survive in visual form. However, the character will not. In particular, the social housing areas that formed the heart of the suburb will go.

Cash is tight, priorities must be set. With private house prices already over the million dollar mark, with those prices likely to rise because of architecture and proximity to transport and the city, each social housing house or unit in Daceyville will provide two to three units elsewhere.

I'm not sure how long the process will take. The combination of inertia with planning and approval processes builds in major lags. My best guess would be about fifteen years.

Change is inevitable. Just recording one aspect of the process.    

ABC cuts and the progressive reduction in the capacity of the Australian media to reflect us back to ourselves

The cuts to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) budget had been well foreshadowed. And, yes, whichever way you cut it, it is another broken promise. The reactions on both sides have been very stereotyped.  In this short post, I want to come at the issue another way, one that reflects my own biases

Background

This is the web site for Australia's Channel Nine news, this for Channel 7, this for Channel 10. Now compare it with ABC TV or, for the sake of completeness, SBS news.

This is the web site for NBN TV news, this for Prime TV. I have deliberately selected these TV stations because they still have local and regional news.

Prime local news has declined as the network spread, while its regional news has always been fairly narrow. The third Northern NSW TV network, Northern Rivers TV, also had local news, but this vanished after it became absorbed into the Ten network.

Regional TV is an area where the commercial networks were, still are, much better than the ABC. You see, ABC is state/metro based and has no local or regional TV coverage at all except, I suppose, where the state or territory entity is is so small that the coverage is by definition local.

ABC radio is quite different. This is the ABC Kimberley site, this the New England North West site. ABC radio is the main source of news and events at regional level outside the still very important if struggling local newspapers. Those papers themselves have an increasingly localised focus.

This is the web site of the Fairfax owned Armidale Express; I write the Express's history column. The site format is the same for all Fairfax regional papers. The regional referred to there is not regional in the old sense, but regional in the sense of feed from other Fairfax papers in regional (ie non-metro) Australia.  

If we now turn to special interest broadcasting, ABC radio is the medium par excellence when it comes to country or regional Australia with programs like the now to be closed Bush Telegraph.

Discussion

We all have our own biases and perceptions. I would argue, for example, that the earlier decision to close the ABC's international service was an own goal of monumental  proportions. In similar vein, faced with cuts the ABC is choosing what to cut with varying responses depending on your perceptions of the value of those things being cut or, alternatively, being saved or even extended. The Australian Financial Review, for example, mounted a swinging attack on the ABC's decision to extend digital coverage.

In all the changes that have taken place in the media, the ABC cuts and consequent re-orientation are just the latest, the things that I have most noticed are a gradual impoverishment at two levels.

One is simply access to news and information. Yes, I am a news junkey, but I think that it's still true. The second and the one that I am most interested in, is the progressive reduction in the capacity of the Australian media to reflect us back to ourselves in all our local diversity.

 The Financial Review argued that the proliferation of on-line sites meant that there was no justification for the ABC to move further into the digital space. That may be true, depending on the way that the arguments are phrased. But I operate in the digital space the paper is talking about.

I created two regional specific New England blogs in part because I was interested in the area in question, in part because there was very little coordinated coverage of the broader area I was interested in. Then I realised that my blogs had become in part journals of record because there was no longer any, I mean any, media source that you might go to for this stuff.

Now here there is a problem. I am a single person with broad interests. How do I find the time for my self-identified journal of record role?  Clearly there is demand; the stats show that, but I struggle to maintain the blogs.

This brings me to the simple take-home message from this post. The decision by the Government to cut funding, the subsequent response by ABC management, further reduces coverage in areas (geographic and subject) that I am interested in. There is no point me arguing about the cuts, for or against, because that won't actually affect what has become a firmly established trend.

If I want to do anything, I am going to have to do it myself, using the platforms I have. Whether that makes sense I leave it to others to judge. For the moment, I'm just thinking about responses.

Saturday morning musings – musings on Australia’s changing society

This weekend, youngest has a stand at Supernova. For those who don’t know it, it is a pulp culture exhibition. This is youngest’s brand. 

This photo shows them setting up for the combined Flame Bird and Sydney Comic Guild Supernova stands.

I have followed my daughters’ journeys with love, interest and great admiration. They inspire me.

This is a picture of youngest in an earlier mode. Note the continuing fire theme. 

We are all influenced by our experiences and those of whom we love the most.

Most young people really, really, don’t want to be stuck on the dole, what is now called the newstart allowance. It sucks on just so many different levels.

If that’s your only income, if you have no back-up from family or friends, you can’t live on it except in poverty. You have to comply with increasingly onerous rules. The income limits, the way that your allowance drops if you earn, actually rules out getting that extra bit of cash that you might need to increase your income, to get that piece of clothing that you need for an interview or just to take a break, to go away.

Rent is the most difficult thing, followed by utilities and then travel costs. If you are already in the welfare sector, if you live in social housing and have subsidised rent, then it’s a little easier to live if harder to break out of the poverty trap. Why harder? There is a big difference between market rent and a rent capped at 20 to 30% of whatever income you have. 

The aspirations of young people, all people, vary. This is  a photo of eldest in Copenhagen. She is there on business, a trip that she earned because of her value to the company. She is focused, organised, in a way that leaves me somewhat in awe.

Two girls, two very different personalities with different aspirations and interests. Both are strong women. Neither displays any aspects of what Treasurer Hockey would call a belief in entitlements, nor (for that matter) do their friends. If anything, I would say that neither has any trust in the state or the benefits offered by the state.

Both have received benefits, the HELP or HECS scheme, the youth allowance or newstart. Both have navigated their way though the myriads rules involved. They have tried to work out the practical issues of how to comply with the rules while gaining the extra income they need to survive. Both have had family and friends that they could rely on.

This next photo from a few years ago shows eldest with her netball team.She enjoys netball and kids, loves coaching. It also gave her a little extra cash.

In our modern world, friends and, more broadly, networks are very important. It determines who gets a job, what support you have when things go wrong.

I am not talking big picture stuff here, just the opposite. All young people today need part time work, they need back-up if things go wrong. This is where who you know, what you do, what you have done, becomes critical. Will your housemates carry you if you can’t find rent? Where can you turn to if you lose your accommodation? Who can give you the next job?

Those kids who do not have the right networks, who live in the wrong area, who mix with the wrong groups, are in trouble. Sometimes its a personality issue, more often a lack of opportunity. I grew up in a world of very low unemployment. of abundant opportunities. That world has gone now, The broad scope of opportunities has exploded, while immediate opportunities have declined, become more selective, more restrictive.

The same problem is emerging at the opposite end of the age spectrum. Those on old style super retire as soon as they can. Indeed, they often have too to maximise their benefits. Those with accumulated assets can retire. The rest have to manage as best they can.

Here there is a disconnect between the political dialogue and on-ground reality. The political dialogue says that we must keep older people in the workforce to overcome the problem of aging, The on-ground reality is that a large number of older people who want to work can’t. There aren’t the jobs.

Some things have improved, The abolition of compulsory retirement, the partial enforcement of laws against ageism, have allowed more people to continue working well past 65. Mind you, this has it’s own problems, for it also blocks out younger workers.

There is another problem in our more fragmented society. We are now dealing with the affects of earlier marriage break-ups. This one is complicated. However, the bottom line appears to be an increasing number of people and especially women who no longer have either the assets or the networks to provide  the most basic support they need.      

Bureaucracy, adhocracy and the computing and communications revolution

In a comment on Saturday Morning Musings – problems with system dependency, Evan referred in a comment to Alvin Toffler and 'adhocracy'. I didn’t remember the concept in a Toffler context,  so looked it up. Wikipedia describes it in this way;

Adhocracy is a flexible, adaptable and informal form of organization that is defined by a lack of formal structure. It operates in an opposite fashion to a bureaucracy. The term was first popularized in 1970 by Alvin Toffler, and has since become often used in the theory of management of organizations (particularly online organizations). The concept has been further developed by academics such as Henry Mintzberg.

Adhocracy is characterized by an adaptive, creative and flexible integrative behavior based on non-permanence and spontaneity. It is believed that these characteristics allow adhocracy to respond faster than traditional bureaucratic organizations while being more open to new ideas.

Apparently the term was used in Toffler’s 1970 Future Shock, and then further extended in The Third Wave (1980). While adhocracy offered real advantages, there were also perceived risks including "half-baked actions", personnel problems stemming from organization's temporary nature, extremism in suggested or undertaken actions, and threats to democracy and legality rising from adhocracy's often low-key profile. To overcome these, a melded bureaucracy-adhocracy model was proposed.

These concepts were not unique to Toffler. Other popular writers including John Naisbitt in Megatrends (1982) popularised them as well. We were moving into a new world based on new computing and communications technologies of flexible working, virtual organisations in which work would be project based, constantly reforming and refreshing.

It is now over forty years since Toffler coined the term, over thirty years since Megatrends became a global best seller. How have we gone? What has actually happened?

On the surface, the very power of the new computing and communications technologies that were meant to free us, to take us in new directions, has created the command and control management that we see today. Management systems have actually gone in the opposite direction to that envisaged; flexibility has been replaced by rules, by new forms of measurement and reporting. The technology has allowed, even mandated, a requirement for the big to get bigger. More and more of our resources are devoted to just making all sorts of systems work.

Is this simply a passing phase, or are we condemned to suffocate in the controls and costs that increasingly enshroud us in our working lives?  Can we define another path?

Meals, dinner parties, social patterns and the need for change

Growing up, we had breakfast, morning tea, lunch or dinner, afternoon tea, tea or dinner, then often supper. In all this mix, the variables were lunch, tea and dinner. Dinner was the main meal, a more ceremonial affair. If held in the middle of the day, it replaced lunch. If held at night, it replaced tea. 

Generally, dinner was the evening meal. However, on some days like Christmas, or more frequently Sunday, it took place in the middle of the day. How can you describe a full roast as Sunday lunch? It does not compute!

I mention this now because Asya Pereltsvaig had a rather nice post on GeoCurrents, “Mustard After Dinner”, Or Are Spain’s Mealtimes Climate-Related?. Her conclusion is no, the pattern of our meals and what we call them has changed over time and between countries. One of the most interesting features is the shift in times of meals.

In Australia, I think that the structure of meals is climate related as well as time related. Climate related because the Australian heat is not conducive to bigger meals in the middle of the day for those working out of doors. Time related because we simply don't have a lot of time in the middle of the day.

The time thing goes further than that. The word dinner has been dropping out of use.We just don't have time for it. Few come home for lunch (or midday dinner) anymore, Few actually have time for dinner in the old sense at night. Tired, most sag in front of the TV set.

The old idea of the dinner party is largely dead. When was the last time you went to one?

Central to a dinner party is the idea of multiple courses spread over a period of time when people actually have to talk to each other. That's the main entertainment. Who has time for that anymore?

We eat out a lot, but we call this going to a restaurant, not generally going out for dinner. Someone else is doing and serving,

I miss the old dinner party. Restaurants are often noisy, the food is so so, and they are not set up for conversation at group level. I actually miss dinner, full stop.

This will be my last post until Sunday, for I am travelling again. This time I am trying to organise a lunch when I get there. I haven't called it dinner, for dinner is dead. Its also at a restaurant. Here I have no choice. But I am trying to make it a little ceremonial in the way dinner parties once were, a little special.

Are we better off with more things as compared to enjoying the things that we have? I wonder. What's the point of working harder and harder just to survive, just so that we can buy things? This is the reason why I have so many problems with modern economic and policy analysis. I just don't want to play anymore.

The reaction to these changes in the structure of our society, the way we work, has manifested itself in many ways, from slow food to buy local produce and farmers' markets. These are all signs of people saying that they don't want to play any more, that they want an alternative.

Life is for living, not just the accumulation of brownie points in a never ending zero sum game.

We are very lucky, for most of those in Western countries have access to basic services and wealth in a way never seen before. Yet is that all  we want?

I am not a leftie or a green radical. I just think that we need a different model.

Chinese warships off Christmas Island, the dreaming and middle class decline

Another snippets post.

I see from the Lowy Institute blog, China makes statement as it sends naval ships off Australia's maritime approaches, that China recently sent three naval vessels to conduct combat simulations and other exercises in the Indian Ocean, somewhere between Indonesia and Christmas Island. Ouch!

The world changes and it pays, I think, to keep a longer term perspective. I have no immediate fear of a blow up with China, but surely the location of that first exercise cannot be totally coincidental. Boats anyone?

This one may sound a bit arcane, but this post on Aboriginal Art & Culture: an American eye, The Dilemma of “Dreaming”, looks at the problematic nature of the terms dreaming and dream time.Something of the same issues come up with the use and abuse of the term "elder."

It seems that Richard Branson is not at all impressed with QANTAS CEO Joyce. Meantime, the Chair and two external directors at department store David Jones have fallen on their swords. A fair bit of the commentary has linked the problems faced by Myers and David Jones to the decline of the Australian middle class on which they have both depended for sales. There is some truth in that.

On the declining middle class, I had dinner a week or so back with an old US friend and former client. She is an active Democrat, so I guess that she has a certain political bias. However, this element of the conversation was purely personal. Talking about the rise in university fees, she gave numbers that I cannot remember, she wondered how people were going to be able to afford university education for their kids. There are scholarships, but their relative significance is diminishing.

Unlike Australia where kids just won't leave home, most US kids focus on the schools they want regardless of location. Going away from home is part of the pattern. There are practical reasons for this, for income variations between graduates from different places are more pronounced than they are in this country. Here, traditionally, it hasn't really mattered, although this is changing.

My feeling is that the US costs of university education is becoming a real sleeper issue in political terms.

Well, that's all for this morning.   

Postscript

Interesting follow up to the China story in today's Sydney Morning Herald, RAAF scrambles plane to observe Chinese naval exercise.

Saturday morning musings - woozy musings on a competitive world

I often wake very early. By nature, I am not an early riser. However, there was a period in my life when the only free undistracted writing time was between 4 and 6am. That period has passed, but the habit of waking early has become entrenched.

Up a little after 4am and feeling somewhat woozy, I staggered to the kitchen and turned the jug on. It's been a very busy, busy, week. I don't know about you, it depends on your age, but as I get older I find that I can't quite maintain the same pace.

Objectively, I'm still no slouch. I still wrote thousands of words this week across print and electronic outlets. As a university student, I found a two thousand word essay a challenge. Now I write the equivalent of several such essays each week, all outside the time bounds set by daily work needs.

The world changes. I know that must seem dreadfully obvious, but it's still true.

I was interviewing this week. It was a short term contract project officer position, low level. I looked at the CVs and blinked. In fact, I read them several times. Every single applicant was grossly, I mean grossly, over-qualified for the position. Some had been out of work for almost twelve months. We interviewed four. 

My fellow interviewer, the boss of the area, looked at me and said "I wish that I could employ them all!"  I agreed. Put the four together and you would have a very powerful team.

Want project management skills? Try multiple qualifications in project management with capacity demonstrated in multiple projects. Want mapinfo? Got it. Want high level Excel?  Got it. Want statistical capacity in analysing the results of major national data collections? Got it. Want to set performance standards, develop contracts and then manage contracts against standards? Got it. Want to map a process so that you can improve it? Got it. And so it goes on. 

Remember, this is a low level position we are talking about, 

Interestingly, what you didn't get was experience in managing others, That rarely happens now. This wasn't necessary for the position, but once you would would have expected such capacity and experience  with the roles that these people had carried out. Management used to be considered important. We have redefined this from existence.

Water boiled, I carried my cup across to to the computer and started to explore the internet. There was some interesting stuff, but this will have to wait until later.     

Saturday Morning Musings - innocence, respect, the invisible person with a dash of money

This morning's post is a round-up, a muster, of things talked about on this blog and elsewhere. For the sake of simplicity, I am using headings to separate multiple topics.

Respect, informality and the art of listening

In The importance of the Aboriginal concept of respect,  I expressed my concerns about what I perceived to be a decline in respect in current Australian society and contrasted this with the Aboriginal sense of respect. In response, Winton Bates commented that the use of surnames alone did not constitute disrespect. He also wrote: "In my view respect is a basic human need. I remember a person who had an official role in an American prison telling me that respect was the basic requirement survival. "It is all about respect, man"."

I agree with Winton that the simple use of surnames such as Gillard or Abbott does not constitute disrespect; it's the way the names are used that concerned me. Winton's comment was followed by a short comments thread on the rise of informality. Formality and respect are different concepts, both linked also to manners.

I like the less formal Australian approach as compared to, say, England or Germany. By Australian standards, the world I grew up in was relatively formal with complex overlapping social hierarchies. I once tried to explain the naming conventions, the way you addressed others, to a Chinese friend. He was astonished at the complexity!

That world is largely gone, swept away by Australia's economic and social changes. I write about it now from time to time because it was important to me in in a personal sense, more because it is interesting and very different from other Australian worlds. While I regret some aspects of the changes, I also welcome the relative informality that replaced it.   

In terms of Winton's prison comment, I think that the need for respect for us as a person is deeply imbedded in all of us, more so for those who are in some way dispossessed or marginalised. Here Evan wrote: "I am wondering if respect has to do with honour/shame." I think that's accurate.

Evan also wrote: "My feeling (based on hugely limited experience) is that the aboriginal sense of respect has a greater feeling of being personal than our idea of 'respecting the office not the person'." I'm not sure that that is absolutely right. However, I do think, and should have drawn this out, that the Australian Aboriginal concept of respect does incorporate a listening component, a respect for person, that is lacking in the broader Australian society,

The importance of the reader or listener

In recent discussion in various fora, I have said that I try to write for people, A fair bit of my writing has particular individuals, sometimes just one person, in mind. In my mind's eye, I am talking to to them. You can see this in the start of the respect post, That post was written with very particular people in mind, as was my current New England Aboriginal language series in the Armidale Express. 

While I enjoy the craft of writing, this personal focus and the response it gets has proved to be by far the most satisfying aspect of my writing. Here I quote from a Facebook comment. I have deleted names because it was a personal message.

I also mentioned to XXX, that I enjoy reading your articles, because it feels like you’re having an actual conversation with me. So I’m pleased to be a part of your audience. As far as being energised, I must thank you and XXX for motivating me. I am so eager to learn more and have decided to do a BA in History, majoring in Indigenous Studies.

To say that I was flattered and pleased would be a gross understatement. I went dancing round the kitchen (my computer is presently there). One of the messages that I have tried to get across to my fellow writers and especially my fellow bloggers, is that we do have an influence. Of course, I am trying to keep them motivated, I am trying to slow the thinning of the blogging world, but its also true!  

The Invisible Man

In a comment, Ramana reminded me of one of his posts, The Invisible Man. I had forgotten it. Its a very simple post, not long, but I found it to be a very good post directly relevant to the concept of respect. Have you ever felt like the invisible person? I know I have.

Real vs Nominal Economy

Turning to the more mundane, in a comment on Budget conundrums - real vs nominal growth, kvd wrote:

Now you've really got me confused. I thought that in order for 'real growth' to exceed 'nominal growth' you would have to be in a period of deflation. As I'm not aware that we have recently been in such an environment, I'm wondering what report you have read which suggests we've just experienced such an effect?

One of the simplest explanations here is provided by the Sydney Morning Herald's Ross Gittins, Rising damp: why nominal GDP is so flat. It all comes back to the way we measure things!

In responding to kvd's comment. I realised that what was really puzzling me was why this should have affected the estimates. How come Treasury got things so wrong, underestimating tax revenues on the way up, overestimating on the way down? I guess it has to do with the econometric forecasting models and the way that real growth is built in. I should add that I don't know, I'm just guessing.

If that's the case, it strikes me as a bit dumb. Still, it appears that Treasury is promising to focus more on "nominal" growth (ie the normal money measures) to get things better!

Loss of Innocence

In response to Loss of innocence, Ramana wrote:

Paranoia about children's safety. Society has gone bonkers everywhere Jim. I have young nieces and my daughter in law who are frequently seen with me and on more than one occasion I have been called a dirty old man! For exactly the reasons that the grand father could not understand, I have stopped making friends with young children in our local park as some parents think that all of the oldies there are perverts.

So it's just not an Australian problem. As I said in the post, I don't have a solution to this. It just is.

As I write, there are multiple paedophile inquiries running in Australia, while the Anglican Bishop of Grafton has resigned over his treatment of allegations about abuse at the North Coast Children's Home in Lismore. It's really all too hard,

Maybe it's time to bring in some hard rules.

No male can be seen in public with a child, male or female, unless a woman is present. No male may speak to a child of either sex unless he can demonstrate under later investigation by the police that the child is relative and that, further, he can prove that he has done no damage to him or her. No person at a public beach, male or female, may undress a young child to wash him or her under the public shower. No male taking a young female child to the beach on his own (not on, see rule one), may take her into the male changing rooms because she needs a shower or he does and doesn't want to leave her alone.  

  Seriously, it's become all too difficult!  

Katy Waldman and the sometimes influence of our twenties

Today I had intended to write about politics or economics or, perhaps, a combination of the two! Instead, I got sidetracked.

The long weekend edition of the Australian Financial Review combined the normal Friday and weekend editions. I often buy the Friday edition just to read the Review section  for its collection of longer pieces from around the world. This time, the Review reprinted a Slate article by Katy Waldman, The Mysteriously Memorable 20s. The subtitle gives the theme: "Why do we remember more from young adulthood than from any other time of our lives?" It's a well written piece, but it got me thinking. I don't think that she is quite right. At least, that's not been my experience. But then, the evidence may be drawn from what we think of as "normal people" as classified at points in time.

In saying this, I am drawing from my own experience, but also from the people that I have spoken to or even interviewed. My experience has been that people remember most vividly those periods of their life that have an emotional intensity both high or low that in some ways marks an important period of passage. Often, we do block out the bad. We don't forget about it, we just don't want to talk about it. But in many people's lives, the subsequent good is valued more highly because it contrasts with the dark night. We carry the scars always, we try to put those aside, talking about things highlighted by the black unseen light of the dark past.

As both a reader and writer, I am fascinated by biography. The thing that stands out to me, the fascination, is simply the complexity of it all. In many western societies, we have forgotten how unstable life is. What we think of as normality is not normal at all.

Just take Australia in the twentieth century. At Federation, many parts of the country had just emerged from a great depression. Drought was raging, affecting people in ways outside modern ken because so many were directly or independently dependent on the land. The Great War began thirteen years later, with Australia suffering some of the highest casualties relative to population of any of the belligerents. The Great Depression followed twenty eight years after Federation, then ten years later came the Second World War.

The new Australian migrants and especially the million plus displaced people, what we would now call refugees, who came to this country were focused on survival, on recreating life in a new land. In conversation or interview, they did talk about the past prior to the war, ut did so because that more peaceful time was a relief from what was to come. And, even then, it was not clear-cut. They didn't say that their values or scripts were formed in childhood or in their twenties, but in the meld of their earlier memories with the horrors that followed.

By contrast, those born locally during the war or afterwards were the lucky generation, the first to experience a really long period of relative piece and prosperity. The nearest previous equivalent was the long period between the depression of the late 1840s and that of the crash of the late eighties, also a period of relative peace.

So I'm not sure about the validity of Katy's writing or the research on which it is based. I think that it's validity is time dependent and depends upon circumstance.

As a final aside, the nearest equivalent period to me in terms of her model is not the age twenties at all, It is the time from which I entered what is now called grade ten until I graduated from university and started work in Canberra. I was then twenty one. That early working experience and the life of a young relatively well paid single in Canberra in a share house far from home was another right of passage. But it was different.

My own life has been a series of chapters marked by sudden book-ends, abrupt shifts. If I was to apply some of Katy's questions, I would say that the period with the greatest long term impact on my values and attitudes was my school period. My views have changed considerably over my life, but I think that the statement is still true. And I left school at seventeen after repeating final year because my parents thought that I was too young to go to university.

When I look at my daughters, I think that the same thing is probably true. I have no idea how they will remember their twenties, I will ask if I survive long enough, but at twenty three and twenty five, they are closer to Katy's generation. They also come from a very different generation to mine. And that, I think, should be my end point, for our views are formed by our times.  

Wrestling with confirmation bias

In a comment on Somewhat depressing threads, Winton Bates wrote in part:

I suspect confirmation bias in the pattern you observe, but that doesn't mean you are wrong.

The pattern I see is about the consequences of growth of government. It displaces civil society, it makes people dependent, it responds to every problem with more regulation. It invites disrespect.

But that is a pattern I see everywhere!

I had to laugh. As Winton notes, I may be guilty of it, but in his dry way he is also accusing himself!

Confirmation bias, the tendency to selectively interpret material so that it reinforces our own views, is pretty common. We saw it in some of the reactions to Julia Gillard's now famous speech. We saw it, too, in the US Republican reactions to the polls and polling results casting doubt on their candidates chances. It actually became a circular dance as one news channel or commenter quoted another in support of their views.

We see this all the time on the modern internet as people drift towards sites that support and reinforce their own views. Arguably, this has become one source of deepening polarisation.

I claim to be a social analyst. How, then, do I avoid confirmation bias, something that I get accused of directly or indirectly from time to time?

At one level, life is just too short to bother. I have a bad habit at dinner parties or social functions of trying to explain, of being too objective. Bad Jim! Wrong place, wrong time. Just listen. Your social analyst hat is just inappropriate If people are having a lot of fun piling opinion on opinion.

At other times in similar circumstances if the mood takes me, I will deliberately throw in an alternative view, something that I know will be a red flag item. Done with discretion, this can be fun, but discretion is advisable. You must be able to stand back and not actually become personally involved in the issues.

Then, at other times, I may just want a chance to talk and express my opinions without having to worry about just what I say. Here confirmation bias can be a fine thing!

Yet when trying to write as a social analyst, I am concerned with what is, what it might mean. Sometimes I go beyond this, for I try to provide solutions, responses, to the problems as I have defined them. They are my solutions, I own them, I want to argue for them.

But when writing in a professional way, I use three different techniques to try to control my natural tendency to confirmation bias.

The first is by consciously reading, and its a real effort some time, opposing views. In political terms, this takes me to the blogs and commentariat of left and right.  I tune out the things that are standard opinions beyond noting patterns. Instead, I look for the kernels that might challenge or enhance my own views.

The second thing I do is what I call point and counterpoint. I start with the particular then test with the general and then back to the particular.

The thing that  I do is to try to test by evidence. In the US election this time, everybody started talking about the impact of demographic change. This one has been obvious to Blind Freddy for some time. If you look at my own writing on change in Australia, you will see that I have often quoted demographic or other forms of statistics.

Some of my writing is not easily amenable to statistical test without special surveys. I argue, for example, that changes in management styles in public and private sectors have increased overhead and slowed decision making.

I can show through simple arithmetic that decision times slow and decision costs increase as the number of decision points rises. I can show by logical analysis the way in which the obsession with KPIs and with the measurable can twist decision processes. I can use simple mud map analysis to show how decisions such as those made by the NSW Government on the length of time required to get a driver's license have imposed costs and had a range of adverse outcomes.

What I cannot do is provide an analysis that measures the overall costs of all these things in a way that would grab attention and test my case. The data presently isn't there. I have to rely on point and counterpoint, generalising and then testing with specific examples. But it remains qualitative analysis.

Having said this, I wonder if there is more that I could do to test. But that is a matter for a later discussion. I really need to cook tea, not chat to you!

Somewhat depressing threads

Today's post is just a somewhat random report on recent conversations. The integrating element is social change.

The Ageing of the volunteer workforce

Monday night I gave a presentation on New England history to the Armidale North Rotary Club. The membership is nearly all older. I was told that three service clubs, in this case all female, have shut in Armidale in the last twelve months. Across service organisations, the membership is aging. People wonder how long they can continue.

I asked why this was happening. The view taken was that people didn't like the requirement for constant ordered participation. It didn't fit with modern individualism, or the structures of current life.

Why I shouldn't pay my taxes

I was waiting for a shop to open, and got chatting with someone also waiting, She was quite impatient. I said hullo, and she responded with a comment that could be interpreted as the country is going to the dogs. I asked why.

"I came to this country thirty seven years ago", she said. "I used to tell people that this  was a wonderful country.That's not true anymore. The politicians just squeeze us, They can't be trusted. They only look after the wealthy. I used to pay everything that was demanded, Now I pay as little as I can."

It's not an unusual view.

The Pedestrian Crossing

The NSW Government has recently changed the law to make it an offence for a pedestrian to walk against a don't walk sign. Central Railway Station is Sydney's main railway station. Just outside is a man pedestrian crossing. Those who know the crossing know that when the traffic lights turn red, there is a time gap before the pedestrian sign turns green. If the road is clear, they start walking.

The day of the change, a woman was rushing up down saying that you are breaking the law. She was right, of course. In the space of a few minutes, I counted over one hundred lawbreakers.  The police could have booked the lot. They weren't there. The law has become something that you observe selectively, only when it makes sense or when you have too.

Mega Departments

Smoking in the outside smoker's ghetto, I chatted to someone in the corporate services area. "It's stupid", he said, speaking of a new centralised arrangement. "I told them it wasn't going to work. They should trial it first.  When I asked why they had done it, start roll-out, they said they had no choice. They would fix the problems later."

A little earlier, I was speaking to another person in the same area. "I just spend all my time responding to central requests", she said. "I don't have time to do my job."

The University lecturer

Speaking of a new system, the lecturer said that students hate it. "They are not dumb. They know that they are getting lower grade teaching." He went on: "I wonder why I ever became a university lecturer. We have to do more with less. I can't do research. I have no time. It's just not fun any more." 

I asked about a development project we had been working on. "It's all stalled", he said. "No one has time. it's not measured."

The project is important to me in a personal sense. When I asked what would happen with it, he said nothing. Without higher level support, it was really dead.

Disability Services

At the Armidale presentation,I was asked about disability services. "How", the questioner asked, "can we get support at local level when everything is centralised"? 

I didn't have an answer. I spoke of the Facebook campaign launched by the save Bellingen Hospital Movement. But really, in a world of universals, it is very difficult to make an individual case. You either fit in or you don't.

If you do fit in and get your support, you cannot be sure how long it will last. Government is unreliable. At national or state level, the rules change all the time. No one can be sure. The only lesson is take what  you can, but assume nothing.

Conclusion

Looking at these brief reports, they must seem very negative. That wasn't my intent when I started the post. But they are, I think, all symptoms of an underlying malaise. I think that three things are central to that malaise:

• the desire to control things that cannot be controlled
• a focus on efficiency and effectiveness to the exclusion of the underlying purpose of measures
• an abrogation of personal responsibility in circumstances where personal space, the ability of individuals to contribute in work or society, has become more limited.  

Is modern technology destroying interaction and empathy?

I have mused before on this blog about the impact on new technology on human behaviour.

One example was the way in which it affected the behaviour of my own family. TV was one thing, but then add wife and eldest daughter looking at TV and playing with their laptops, while youngest was playing with the computer in her bedroom. When dinner was ready, wife and eldest would pause to watch TV while eating dinner. Youngest would simply grab food and return to her computer.

I am a naturally gregarious person who likes conversation, so I actually found this quite isolating, especially during those periods when I was working from home. Starved of conversation during the day, wanting to talk, I had no-one to talk too. It was much easier to go to the office area and work on my own computer where at least I had some interaction!

At the office, you see something of the same pattern with email traffic. People’s routines are dictated by a combination of their electronic diaries with email traffic. Instead of popping to a nearby desk to say something, you send an email. With modern workflows, you workflow a document to someone for action, send an email to confirm, and then wait.

On Sydney buses and especially trains, a remarkable number of passengers sit there with ear phones on listening or watching their hand held device or talking or SMSing on their mobile.. No one looks at anyone else. Obviously there are exceptions, a group of chatting school friends is an example, but the base pattern described is pretty accurate. Now there is evidence that all this is affecting the way we think and interact, our basic personalities, our very sense of our own self.

Most of the reports I have seen of the work of Susan Greenfield and Bruce Perry and others on this topic appear to be behind pay walls. This is one example that is not. Much of the reporting is also influenced by the very particular slant of the outlet and the purpose of writing. But if we cut through all that, we find certain features.

First, survey results of teachers suggest that children’s attention spans have become shorter as they opt for screen based activities over conventional reading. This would fit with my observations of work environment.

Much more time has to be spent on packaging material, less time is available for developing and testing the real content to be packaged. Don’t get me wrong here. I have always used diagrams. I did so in my final school exams, I do so today. A simple diagram or flow chart can make it easier for people to understand, while forcing simplification of the author’s thinking. It’s the balance I am concerned with.

Secondly, studies of US university students have found that the level of empathy, the understanding of others measured by conventional tests, among US college graduates has declined by 40 per cent over the last twenty or thirty years, with much of the decline concentrated in the period after 2000.

It’s not possible to make a judgement without reading the original research material, but again this fits with my own observations. Empathy is built through interaction with others and especially those who are in some way different from you. If everybody you mix with is broadly the same, how can you learn to interpret and respond to difference?

To a degree at least, the social structures that used to bring people together in face to face situations have declined. The on-line interactions do not substitute, for we have all seen how they tend to group people based on commonalities. Of course this was true of other interactive mechanisms. It’s a scale question.

From this point, the reporting seems to largely focus on implications, building pyramids of conclusions. I will leave that part of the discussion aside.

Hype, technology & the importance of people

Browsing in a second hand book shop some years ago, I found a battered management book. Published at the start of the eighties, it argued that IBM would become the world’s dominant corporation because of its dominance over information technology. Ten years later, very similar arguments were being applied to Microsoft.

Both IBM and Microsoft benefited from a technology shift. Both rode a wave of success. Both remain successful corporations. Neither achieved that long term commercial dominance forecast by the popular management pundits.

The creative destruction unleashed by the application of new computing and communications technologies is huge, dramatically altering the business landscape. However, it is not the first such shift, nor will it be the last.

To illustrate, the invention of the internal combustion engine had equivalent effects and in much the same time horizon as the IT revolution. Over the first two decades of the twentieth century, entire industries vanished as new ones were born. The human landscape was reshaped. How we lived, where we lived, what we ate all changed.

The rolling effects of the internal combustion engine revolution continued for decades. New industries and activities continued to be born. New fortunes were made. The motor vehicle, aircraft, the shopping complex all became natural and apparently fixed features of the human landscape.

If you look at the hype surrounding the internet as the latest manifestation of the computing and communications revolution, there is a huge focus on winners and losers and on the fads, fashion and social implications of the new technology. I am as fascinated with this as anyone else, yet it helps to keep a sense of perspective.

From a practical personal and business viewpoint, the key thing is the way we use the technology to achieve our objectives. We know that a lot of the froth and especially the kit will vanish. That’s just a fact. What is important is how best to take advantage of it all.

My local tennis club is a good example. I play tennis badly, but enjoy the game and the social interaction. Like many of us, I spend far more time in front of a computer than I really should. I need to get out to do something physical and to talk to people.

My tennis club has an on-line presence. I use that to find out what is going on and to make court bookings. They have a simple system that I can use easily. That’s important. However, that’s not why I go back, that’s not why I am such a supporter.

In simple human terms, there are people behind the technology. I am called Jim. If I have a problem, I can call a human. They recognise me when I come to play. We chat.

The technology helps the club because they get more cash up front, have fewer cancellations, make the courts accessible to more people, Yet it works because it helps me as a customer do the things that I want to do without taking away the things that I value.

I think that we all need to remember this when we consider how we might use the new technology to our own advantage. In the end, it all comes back to people.