Things

Oct. 16th, 2006 07:13 am
melwil: (Default)
[personal profile] melwil
-The interesting thing about once (a very long time ago, before I started my own dance school) teaching dance to the daughter of two local celebrities, is that you see them on the news when they are in an earthquake in Hawaii

-I undrestand that farmers are having a bad time, and that effects all of us. But why is no one running to help the other people in the nation who are having a bad time. Why do farmers get 'assistance' and people effected by the cyclone get 'loans'? Where are the safeguards for the employees whose job and superannuation disapear when the businesses go bankrupt? Why am I reading a book about Howard and God that makes me so incredibly angry?

-Why did Spotlight hike their prices only on the material I needed?

on 2006-10-16 08:52 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] sangerin.livejournal.com
Where are the safeguards for the employees whose job and superannuation disapear when the businesses go bankrupt?

They don't have a whole political party formed for their benefit. And the current Liberal (and Labor) parties have done a good job at killing the Unions, which would have taken the place of the National party for urban workers, I would have thought.

on 2006-10-16 10:15 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] dee255.livejournal.com
Oh my god, farmers are the biggest WHINGERS. My mother is married to one. They drive me nuts with their constant bitching. What the hell is so damn sacred about farming?

on 2006-10-16 10:29 am (UTC)
ext_6531: (Default)
Posted by [identity profile] lizbee.livejournal.com
...the act of creating the raw ingredients that feed us?

on 2006-10-16 10:34 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] dee255.livejournal.com
That same argument could apply to an awful lot of industry that provides us with a lot of necessary things and doesn't get the same mollycoddling the farming industry does.

on 2006-10-16 10:40 am (UTC)
ext_6531: (Default)
Posted by [identity profile] lizbee.livejournal.com
That's because the National Party stuck by its Country Party origins while the ALP ditched the working classes in the seventies? Farming communities are always the hardest hit by economic downturns, and are subject to ecological issues as well. Mollycoddling, as you call it, is necessary to the survival of the industry.

on 2006-10-16 10:41 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] dee255.livejournal.com
Okay, we'll have to disagree. I think they're whingers and you don't. Meh.

on 2006-10-16 10:48 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] jennifergearing.livejournal.com
Actually, it has a lot to do with myth-making and the primacy of the farmer in the mythical 'Australian' foundational identity, and their former role as the prime industry of the Australian economy. Much of the perceived complaining has to do with the fact of farmers realising that farming doesn't hold the pride of place it once did, as the cities increasingly don't rely on farming for their economic stability.

on 2006-10-16 10:52 am (UTC)
ext_6531: (Default)
Posted by [identity profile] lizbee.livejournal.com
That too, but I have trouble constructing arguments when I'm eating Jaffas. *grin*

Much of the perceived complaining has to do with the fact of farmers realising that farming doesn't hold the pride of place it once did, as the cities increasingly don't rely on farming for their economic stability.

That, and an increasing realisation that when urban-dwellers think of farmers and rural inhabitants at all, it's with contempt and dismissal. It creates a certain defensiveness, especially when the government would destroy the industry in the name of free trade if they didn't complain.

on 2006-10-16 11:08 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] jennifergearing.livejournal.com
The defensiveness also comes from that mythical foundational identity thing, which has been (as perceived by many) increasingly undermined by things like multiculturalism, native title and the overturning of terra nullius.

It's quite fascinating, actually. A lot of the perceived whinging (and the Hanson phenomenon) also has to do with much perceived abandonment by the National Party, which has been somewhat rectified more recently by the Nationals in response to the Hanson thing.

(no, this wasn't the subject of my last round of politics research. not at all. *grin*)

on 2006-10-16 11:14 am (UTC)
ext_6531: (Default)
Posted by [identity profile] lizbee.livejournal.com
Of course not. And my mother isn't touring rural communities to study the political culture, not at all. Uh huh.

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