Monthly Archives: Oct 2015

The Martian

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Last weekend Mrs SG and I went to see a new file: ‘The Martian’, starring Matt Damon. If you haven’t seen it yet, please do.  It’s about an astronaut who’s left for dead on Mars but is in fact alive.  I won’t say any more.

People who should know say that the science in the film (and in the original book) is very accurate. That’s not to say that everything on-screen is probable, but at least it’s possible.  A critic pointed out that the film is remarkable for two absences – there’s no romance and there’s no villain.

While we’re on the subject of science fiction I will take the opportunity to plug my own opus, which will be available as an e-book as soon as the proof-reading and formatting are finished. It’s the Eeks Trilogy and the first book is called ‘Eeks’.  Please look out for it at your favourite e-book retailer’s website.

Cayman Islands

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There are plenty of tax havens in the world, but one stands head-and-shoulders above the rest when it comes to notoriety: the Cayman Islands. One never hears or reads of the Cayman islands in any other context.  President Obama singled it out when he spoke about the need to close tax loopholes that are abused by US corporations.  Indeed, he singled out one building in the Cayman Islands – Ugland House – saying that it houses over 12,000 businesses.  He characterised it as “either the biggest building or the biggest tax scam on record.”

So when Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s new Prime Minister, was looking around for a home for much of his very considerable wealth, why did he choose two investment funds headquartered in the Cayman Islands?

It is normal and proper for senior politicians to place their private wealth in a blind trust, insulating it from their decision-making while in office. Malcolm Turnbull has done this.  But why, when the very fact of his great wealth makes many Australians distrust him, would he choose investment funds domiciled in the Cayman Islands, a territory whose very name has become a synonym for ‘shonky’?

It should be no surprise that the Labour Party has picked this up as a stick to beat him with. He maintains that the tax efficiency of the fund will produce larger profits on which he will in due course pay Australian income tax.  I have no reason to doubt this.  But in heaven’s name why the Cayman Islands?!

The Bleeding Obvious

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I get stroppy when people are pilloried for stating the bleeding obvious. This happens a lot to politicians because whatever they say is assumed to be politically loaded. Let me offer a couple of examples…

First, Tony Abbott (recently deposed Australian Prime Minister) remarked that taxpayers were subsidising a lifestyle choice by many indigenous Australians to live in remote communities, where employment opportunities are scarce and the cost of providing infrastructure and social services is high. I’m paraphrasing but I think that’s a fair summary. He was immediately criticised for making an outrageous attack on disadvantaged people and ridiculed for using the phrase ‘lifestyle choice’.

I don’t know what was in Tony Abbott’s heart and mind when he said that, but it is objectively true that people, indigenous or otherwise, can choose where they live. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics: “At June 2006, most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people lived in non-remote areas with an estimated 32% of people living in major cities, 43% in regional areas, and 25% in remote areas.”

It may be argued that many indigenous people feel a strong spiritual connection to their land (their ‘country’) and would not be happy living elsewhere. But satisfying that felt need is unquestionably a lifestyle choice, and making that choice is possible only because the rest of the population pays for it. Most non-indigenous Australians feel a mixture of pity and guilt towards their indigenous fellow-citizens so they may be perfectly willing to pay whatever it costs. But what’s wrong with pointing it out?

Second, Theresa May (UK Home Secretary) stated that there was a limit to the rate at which immigrants could be received into the UK without causing social cohesion. Again, I’m paraphrasing.

Her words were perhaps an uncomfortable reminder of Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech in 1968, but they were nevertheless true. Perhaps that limit exceeds the inflow of immigrants that would result from the UK’s acceptance of a ‘fair’ proportion of the current wave of people fleeing war, persecution and poverty, who are hammering at Europe’s door – or in many cases smashing the windows and climbing in. But it cannot be denied that there is a limit. It’s bleeding obvious, isn’t it?

Note: The phrase “the bleeding obvious” is a quotation from ‘Basil the Rat’, the final episode in the brilliant TV series ‘Fawlty Towers’, written by John Cleese and Connie Booth in the 1970s.

Mental Health

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Here we are at the start of Mental Health Week, and I read in my morning newspaper that “one in seven children and young people experienced a mental disorder in the previous 12 months.” Then on the radio I heard that the same proportion of adults had suffered anxiety disorders in the same period.

How can this be?! If any mental condition is as common as that, how can we call it a ‘disorder’? Surely we’re defining as disorderly aspects of normal human experience. Surely we’re setting the bar too low and steering people into treatment who don’t belong there.

This is not an original thought, of course. Medicalising normal human states is an international sport for Big Pharma. The rest of us are free to laugh at it and carry on with our messy lives, balancing sadness with joy, anxiety with hope.

Actually, with the world in its present state, I’d say that if anyone is not experiencing extreme anxiety they are by definition suffering a mental disorder.

42

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Few numbers have achieved the fame of this one. Thanks to Douglas Adams and his brilliant Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, we know that 42 is the answer to the question of Life the Universe and Everything.

This happens to be my 42nd post. I am too modest to suggest that my posts do more than scratch the surface of that question, but regular readers may disagree.

Note:  The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy started life as a BBC radio serial, then became a series of books, a TV serial and a film.

Daylight Saving Time

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I got up early this morning, with plenty of time to prepare the porridge, shave and read the Sunday paper before taking Mrs SG her bed-tea at 0730. Or so I thought. “I hope you all remembered to put your clocks forward,” said the nice man on Radio National.

So it’s time to get stroppy again about the idiotic practice of putting clocks forward every spring and back again every autumn. In Australia (where I live) we have 5 time zones for half the year: Eastern, Central and Western are with us all the time, and the 5 southern states/territories go onto daylight saving time (DST) while the other 3 stay put.

This is crazy – not just in Australia but in most of Europe, North America, much of Brazil and bits of Africa and Asia. In China, which is a pretty big place, they manage with 1 time zone for the whole country and throughout the year!

There’s a good map at Wikipedia. There are 3 colours, the most interesting of which is orange which identifies the many countries have tried DST and abandoned it. Let’s all do that!

“Ah,” I hear some people say, “but what about the schoolchildren who would have to go to school in the dark? What about the farmers who would sleep through an extra hour of valuable daylight?”

To those people I reply, “Balderdash! Schools, farms, shops, factories and offices can decide to shift their hours of business forward, backward or sideways if they wish – without mucking about with anyone’s clocks!”

Skiing

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I just got home from a week’s skiing. Mrs SG, No.2 son and I drove for 16 hours to Thredbo and squeezed ourselves into a 2-room self-contained suite with a mountain view. A free shuttle bus took us to the slopes every day and the apartment-style hotel had lockers for skis and boots and a Scrabble set that guests could borrow. It was the last week of the season, so snow was a bit think on the ground and the air temperature was too high to run the snow-makers. But we had fun.

In case this seems too effusively positive to be sincere, especially coming from one so stroppy, let me assure you that I’m not being paid to talk up Thredbo.

I’m not very good at skiing and I fall over quite a lot, but I really, really like it. I like it for two reasons. First, when you’re going downhill you have to concentrate 100% on what you’re doing. If you start thinking about work or blocked drains or Syrian refugees you can end up wrapped around a tree.

Second, between mad downhill dashes and sprawling, undignified crashes, you have much longer periods ascending, above the slopes, on various kinds of lift. Then the mind can wander, undistracted by ’phones, emails, tweets or people.

Since I’m in the final stages of writing a book, these periods were invaluable to me. I wrote and re-wrote in my head. I considered different ways to tie up loose ends, iron out creases in the silk-smooth fabric of my narrative, make the characters more real and their dialogue more natural.