Welfare And The State

I’ve never understood the loathing of welfare. The safety net thing — that’s the single biggest advantage we have over places like the US. Try talking to Jennicki for a while as to what it means to know that losing your job means losing your healthcare – and knowing there’s not even a useful equivalent of ‘the dole’ to keep you out of the gutters.

I have no problem with welfare in this country. I’ve seen too many successful and valued writers, artists and musicians get their start on unemployment. I know too many high-tax-paying businessfolk who got their start because they could afford to take a risk, knowing that if they failed it didn’t spell the end for them. A semi-functioning welfare structure acts as more than a safety net: for the young, the creative and the entrepeneurial, it provides a springboard. I'll let you in on a clue, here: most of the folk I knew through university have sucked at the government tit in one form or another. And I will bet you my last penny that every one of them has since then gone on to pay far, far more in taxes than ever they received in welfare.

You know some of those people too, if you're on this site regularly. And if that's the case, you're stuck with acknowledging this painful fact: for a (possibly) small but important class of people, the welfare system actually produces a massive profit for the government -- because without the ability to move between jobs, and to make career choices, and to further their education without the risk of drowning their futures in US-style debt, those innovative, independent-minded, highly intelligent people would probably have been stuck at the bottom of the fiscal food chain, deposited there by the lack of a parentally-provided fortune.

All that Horatio Alger myth-building stuff? It's bullshit. For ever genuine clawed-their-way-up-from-the-bottom success story, there are at least ten thousand who won the birth lottery and scored via simple nepotism and inheritance. Without a decent welfare structure, if you're born at the bottom of the heap, that's where you stay. Don't take my word for it: go and look at social mobility in countries without decent welfare. It isn't hard to do... but I suppose it's harder than sitting back and bitching about your taxes going to those lazy dole-bludging cheats, eh?

I find the resentment of tax by the wealthy predictable, boring, and more than a little painful. Welfare is enough to keep people from starving, and not much else. You should think of it as a form of insurance, because if it isn’t paid – well, history shows that starving people with nothing to lose tend to take matters into their own hands with some violence. And frankly, I'd be one of 'em in a flash. If the system wasn't there to support my family if we suffered a dose of bad luck -- and bad luck can be all it takes, folks -- you can bet I'd be only too ready to act against that system to support my children. Pay your insurance, folks: you don't want too many angry fathers working together with your comfortable, asset-rich asses in their gunsights.

There's more: idiotic right-wing religions take root amongst the poor and oppressed. Yes, the rich Saudis are Wahabi — in theory — but where do you find the suicide bombers and the fanatical jihadis? For every Osama bin Laden, there are ten thousand Mohammed ibn Mohammeds, sons of the souk and the wadi. You want to see radical Islam (or hardcore USAnian christo-fundo-bullshit) settle firmly in Australia? Cut welfare: let the religious organizations move in to support the disenfranchised. In a generation, you'll be fucked like you could never imagine.

Are there people claiming welfare dishonestly? I expect so, yes. What do we lose to them anyway? The little money we pay them is spent, not accrued. They are not becoming wealthy on your taxes. In fact, they’re shifting that money into the pockets of people even richer than you — and if you really want to get pissed off about the system, maybe that’s where you should be looking. After all, we're not a poor country. We can afford to ignore a few people siphoning pennies out of the chump change jar - especially when we're willing to throw elephant bucks at the banks every time they cry poor.

There's still more, though. This is Australia. Our national identity is all about the fair go, the helping hand, about pulling our mates up out of the mud when they fall. An Australia without a decent, comprehensive welfare structure isn't an Australia at all: it's a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fat Corporate Bastardry, the world-wide nation-state knocking on every door on the fucking planet, and I don't want any part of it.

Paying taxes isn't my favourite thing. I disagree with many of the areas where the government chooses to spend my money. But you won't hear me complaining about welfare: it's done too much for me, for my family, for my friends, my community, and my country.

Just Another Thursday.

Elder Son has cello Thursday mornings. His teacher visits the high school, not the primary school, so we have to get him there by 0830. Normally, Natalie loads Younger Son on the bus first, but today she forgot the protocols.

Ah well. She took off with Elder Son. I made a lunch, loaded Younger Son and the Mau-Mau in the car (after spraying everyone with pyrethrin/orange-oil/ti-tree louse dismayer) and scooted down to Scottsdale. Dropped Younger Son at school, reminded him I'd be picking him up after lunch for afternoon Spanish.

Had a quick breakfast at the bakery with the Mau-Mau, which made her very happy. Then we zipped round to the hospital, and waited briefly for Natalie to show up with Elder Son and his cello. Loaded up. Headed home.

Elder Son started in on his typing exercises. The Mau-Mau got a dose of ABC kids cartoons, and I answered some email for about half an hour. Then I got together with Elder Son, and we tackled science: what's the difference between living things and non-living things?

I figured we should start in on the living world. We've been playing with magnets and electricity, but now we've made contact with the natural history curator at the museum, it made sense to look in another direction. Elder Son did a pretty good job coming up with stuff to define "life". Of his own accord, he decided that living things grow; that they take in stuff from their environment, change it, and return other stuff to the environment. He also decided that living things reproduce themselves. He had to be prompted to consider the concept of irritability/response to environmental stimuli, but I was pretty happy with the discussion anyhow.

After that, he ducked outside and found five different living organisms. While he did that, I made lunch. When he came back in, he wrote a paragraph about each of his living organisms (a sample from a lavender bush including flowers, a sample from a hazelnut tree including the nut, a mushroom, a shelf fungus and a grasshopper) detailing how they fit the description of 'life' that we'd worked out. He had to do a bit of reading on mushrooms and fungi to figure out that his samples were actually the reproductive/spore-bearing parts of the mycelium, but overall he did well.

We dashed back down to Scottsdale then. Collected Younger Son from school. Collected the post. Did some shopping for dinner. Zipped back home again.

The boys had to clean the cages of the rats and mice, so I took the time to read to the Mau-Mau for a while. Once the rodents were fixed up though, it was time for an afternoon of Spanish. Then we got into the cleaning and tidying, and I had laundry to do, firewood to split, fires to lay and start...

Fucking Dog has learned to jump the low wire fence I built around the clothesline. We've had a month or more of our laundry NOT being all over the ground. That's come to an end. At least part of my weekend will be spent building a higher fence. Short of actually killing the dog -- which tempts me at the moment, I admit -- there seems to be no way of convincing him that he doesn't want to swing by his teeth from the dangling laundry. So: picked up a lot of laundry off the grass, took the next load up to the dryer in the shed.

... made Yum Cha-style steamed dumplings for dinner: pork, chicken and prawn. Also ran up some crunchy spring rolls and some steamed vegies. Natalie was late coming home, unfortunately. It's a pity, since she loves her Chinese dumplings. Still, there wasn't much I could do about it.

Finally she did get home, and I sent the kids off for their bath, fed her... and then, at last, retired to the study for a beer. Where I am. Now. Listening to Natalie wrangle the kids through tooth-brushing and pre-bed stuff. She's running late. The Mau-Mau has wound up something fierce. Ordinarily I'd step out and shut things down, but Natalie has insisted I shouldn't do that... so I figure it's her problem and she can deal with it herself. It's about time, anyhow. Figure if she's going to ask me not to intervene, then she's got to work out how to get a handle on things.

I have to admit to just a wee touch of schadenfreude here...

Decontamination Protocols: Phase One In Force

No. It's nothing to do with the Irish fiddlers. The last of them took off yesterday, full of lingering good cheer, booze, and tasty food. It wasn't a bad weekend. It could have been, if I hadn't simply written it off to music and kids. There's no way I could have actually achieved anything. But accepting it as a weekend of noise, chaos, music, kids, and so forth meant it worked just fine.

The Decon Protocols actually refer to a much more cosmopolitan and pedestrian pest: Pediculus humanis capitis, better known as the all-too-fucking-common Head Louse. Natalie's been scratching her head and complaining for over a week now, but we put it down to the change in weather. However, the Mau-Mau started scratching too, and a cursory examination showed she had rather a number of fellow travellers aboard.

Ahhhh, shit.

On the good side: my background with bugs means I don't get uptight about this stuff. Lice happen, especially when you've got a three-year-old in daycare. And as pests and parasites go, lice are really no big deal. They're vulnerable to an exciting array of chemical countermeasures, and better still, they don't survive away from the host for very long. All you have to do is kill the present lot of adults with some kind of treatment, then repeat the dose in about six days -- after the new lot hatch, but before they can start breeding.

In the meantime, it makes sense to wash hats, pillowcases, bedding and the like in good hot water (add a little bleach if you wanna get serious), then dry and air them thoroughly in the sun. Run the vacuum around the place to pick up any stray hairs that might be carrying an egg. That's it. You're done.

Except, of course, that you have to make sure you co-ordinate with the people your kids play with. There's really not that much resistance to chemicals in the louse community. Mostly, what people think is resistance is actually nothing more than reinfestation from contact with an external source.

Ergo: even though Natalie and the Mau-Mau were the only ones with any sign of buggy buddies, I've spent the morning treating everyone in the whole damned house. The girls got a Maldison-based shampoo, which is nasty but effective... and not recommended unless an infestation is confirmed. The boys (including yours truly) got a treatment involving a commercial blend of ti-tree, lemon, and eucalyptus oils. Stinky as hell, but not nearly as toxic as good old Maldison.

The Tale of the Comb was telling. (Those super-fine-tooth combs? They're fuck-all use in terms of treatment. But they can help confirm the existence of an infestation.) Natalie and the Mau-Mau were both well occupied. The boys and I - shorter hair? - were all clear.

Being Mister Overkill, the way I usually am, I also picked up a nifty hairspray. It's a mix of pyrethrum (a bug killer) plus various active, pleasant-smelling oils. Orange and lemon, just for starters. You spray it into the dry hair after treatment, and use it daily for a while. It should prevent any reinfestation. I'll keep it up for two weeks. By that time, even if there are any eggs or bugs left in the house, they'll be long dead.

The thing to remember about lice is that they're not like fleas. They stay really close to their hosts. They don't nest in bedding. They don't leave eggs and larvae in the carpet. If they're away from the nice, safe, warm scalp for long, they go belly-up.

On the whole, they're pretty pathetic as parasites go. Now, if only I could coax Natalie back down from the ceiling, where she is hanging, all a-quiver with a truly epic attack of the Ick.

Invasion Of The Irish Fiddlers.

Aaargh.

Natalie's having one of her occasional Irish Fiddle weekends. She's brought a really good player/instructor (and family friend) over from Melbourne, and invited...umm... a lot of fiddle players for the event.

Normally I'm pretty good with this sort of thing. Unfortunately, I'm coming off a long and annoying cold I inherited from Younger Son, and a week of rather shoddy sleep, and dammit, I'm a little tired. So. Today I've done the shopping, run the pump, laundered, wrangled kids (there's my three. And the fiddle instructor's son. And several others of whose ownership I'm uncertain), prepped lunches... I've made twelve litres or so of spicy pumpkin soup complete with sour cream, chopped chives and coriander, and bacon bits. I've also made two full-size loaves of cheese and onion bread to go with the soup, and I've got a stand-by plan of cous-cous with prawns and coriander if they're still hungry later. Oh, and custard and fruit if need be, yep.

I've also prepped for a massive bonfire, to burn off the huge heap of old timber, dead furnishings, tree-cuttings and stuff that's piled up over the last year. And of course, I wrangled kids even more.

Now there's something like a dozen fiddlers outside my study. And there are kids who need to be prepped for bed, including the whole bath, toothbrush, pyjama thing. And it seems that the Mau-Mau will be sleeping upstairs with us tonight because an entire family of fiddlers will occupy her room. A couple more will apparently be on the lounge room floor. I think the Cinema Shed will hold a half-dozen or so... there's plenty of mattress space there, anyhow. Mr Fiddle Instructor has already been here two nights in the guest room, with his son, so that space is full up.

I do like a good evening of Irish music with drinks and the rest... but I'm definitely running out of energy here. Still, I suppose I can post something for the occasion...

What follows is a set of lyrics. I've got a melody for it, but I'm damned if I can be bothered trying to transcribe it for Blog, so you can make up your own if you like. Anyway, the song is called "Paddy's Day At Dooley's" and it's written in honour of that long succession of St Patrick's Day near-riots I attended at Dooley's Pub in Brisbane through the nineties. Happy days!

Paddy's Day At Dooley's

A world away from Dublin there’s a land of dust and sun
From all the corners of the earth its wild people come
It’s a land with little history, where people can be free
Their wars and grief behind them, once they come across the sea
But there is one certain thing that all of them hold dear
A special day for everyone that comes but once a year
It’s a mighty celebration, and this I tell you truly:
That everybody’s Irish, on Paddy’s day at Dooley’s!

Chorus:
It’s a little green pub in a big dry town
With booze and girls and music and lots of tasty grub
It brings the plastic Paddies for a hundred miles around
Because everybody’s Irish at Dooley’s Pub!

Well I met with Paddy Johnson and we stepped up to the bar
While the band struck up a chorus of “Whiskey In The Jar”
We may have had a Guinness, or maybe we had ten
And when we’d drunk the glasses dry they lined them up again!
Then Paddy Schwarzenegger went to show ‘em how to dance
With his hands down by his sides he did the Michael Flatley prance
And when the barmaid laughed at him, he said to her quite coolly:
“Eff-ree buttee’s Irish, un Patty’s dey ut Tooley’s”


There was Paddy Shostakovich playing fiddle in rare form
And Paddy Van Den Hoogenbande was singing up a storm
They were making such a racket that the band put down their gear
And started drinking Guinness, and whiskey shots and beer.
Paddy Hideyoshi, he could play the spoons right well
And Paddy Ramasita joined right in with a yell
Paddy Krasnic cried “Begorra” though he didn’t really fool me —
Still, everybody’s Irish, on Paddy’s day at Dooley’s!


The party picked up steam when Paddy Strauss came in
Picked up a wooden table, and walloped Paddy Chin
So Paddy Depardieu stepped up and kicked him in the balls
Then Paddy Jones grabbed Paddy Smith and tossed him through a wall
The fun had barely started when I heard somebody shout
"Paddy Wagon is outside and the cops are getting out!"
“I’m sure they’ll understand,” says I, “For though we’ve been unruly,
Sure everybody’s Irish on Paddy’s day at Dooley’s!”


The battle raged down Brunswick Street into the Valley Mall
Then about a million cops arrived to arrest us one and all
They took us to the watch-house but we filled up all the cells
So they stuck us in the courthouse and the city hall as well.
Then the coppers took the stand and called us a bunch of louts
But the judge banged down his gavel, and he threw the charges out
“They’re innocent,” said he, “For under section thirty-four a, paragraph 12, clause eight of Finkelstein versus O’Donaghue in a judgement handed down by the Right Honourable William de Bleriot with regard to matters of affray and other infringements on public order while under the influence of intoxicants and participating in completely unwarranted celebrations relevant to a culture which has little or no connection to that of the defendant, the law says quite truly:
That everybody’s Irish on Paddy’s Day at Dooleys!

Now... does anybody know the number of a pest control firm specialising in Irish fiddlers?

And Sometimes, You Win.

Ohhh, yes.

I've talked off and on about the struggles in educating Elder Son. If you've been around here for a while, you know he gets bored as hell with the regular schoolwork. Sure, he's disorganised and he flies off on his own tangents, and he's likely to ignore little things like schoolteacher noises (which does NOT make his teacher happy) but the bottom line is that it's not just him who's off the mark. He may not be naturally inclined to rule off his margins, tuck in his shirt and pay attention to the detailed disposition of his books in his drawer -- but the school doesn't seem to be well prepared to challenge him in the areas where he greatly exceeds their curriculum requirements.

I find it hard to believe that the best we could hope for from his schooling would be neat books, attentive and obedient response to commands, and an ability to obey rules without question. I can understand that the school wants him to be a more co-operative, more properly socialised student, and to a limited degree, we want that too. It would be nice if he paid attention the FIRST time we asked him to find his shoes to go out, for example. But -- and this won't surprise any of you who have met me -- I don't see it as an urgent priority, y'know? I'd rather he actually LEARNED something, and in particular, I'd like him to discover how to enjoy learning.

To be fair, the school has been willing to let Natalie and I get sincerely proactive in all this. The recent post about his study of Tennyson's "Blow, Bugle, Blow" here at home is a case in point. And they're doing their best: he's in an extension math group and all. But you may recall that when we organised a meeting between myself, a few of the school people, and the local chap in charge of Government programmes for the "gifted and talented"... well, the Government programme-chappie wasn't much help.

He told me I seemed intimidating -- this before I'd said anything more than Hello, my name is... -- and expressed concerns about my "expectations" and the pressure on Elder Son. And when he was pressed as to what particular help he could offer our situation, his replies were -- shall we say evasive, to remain diplomatic?

Nevertheless, the school itself has done its best. And one of the things they did was to get together with a few other local schools, talk to the Queen Vic Natural History Museum, and organise an excursion day of Science At The Beach. Elder Son was invited to take part, despite his relative youth. The day was aimed at years 5 and 6, and he was the only one from his year invited.

Natalie and I were a bit trepid, to say the least. Elder Son has a history of being bolshie when faced by new things... and sure enough, on The Day in question, he started to champ at the bit. Didn't think he really wanted to go, apparently.

Not that it made any difference. We're used to this by now, and he wasn't particularly vehement about it, so we just told him flatly he could go, or he could spend the day in his classroom at school. No problems. He went.

And oh, my, didn't it work out well. When he came back that afternoon, we couldn't shut him up. Apparently, the curator of the QV Natural History department spotted him, realised he was genuinely curious and excited, and took him under her wing. He told me in detail about how he got to take photos with her shiny new touch-screen camera. And then he told me all about filter-feeding molluscs that eat micro-organisms, and about the effects of planetary gravitation and the moon and centripetal force on the tides, and he talked about predatory molluscs using their raduli to bore through the shells of simple bivalves, and he talked and he talked and he talked and...

Yep. He bloody loved it. Not only that, but the QV curator in question sent a business card home with him. It included an invitation to bring the boy to the museum for a full backstage tour, including all the exhibits and stuff they don't have on show.

Well, you can bet we jumped at that. I've been trading emails with the good doctor, and she seems lovely. She's a scientist through and through, and says that when she was young, somebody offered her the same kind of opportunity she's putting in front of Elder Son, and it changed her life, so she wants to pass it on.

I can understand that.

Even better, though: she's already suggested that she might be able to set Elder Son up with the museum's Astronomy chap too. That would just be fantastic -- he loves space, stars, planets and telescopes.

I can't readily convey how delighted I am by all this. For a struggling parent, trying hard to keep his kid from sinking into the same school-based quagmire of boredom and social disaster that marked his own childhood, this is a full-on three-cherries-on-the-slot-machine jackpot win. First the Prof from Oxford, and now this! I'm so damned happy I don't really know what to do about it -- and to see that kind of enthusiasm and joy in my kid just takes my breath away.

But you wanna know the absolute fucking cherry on top of the double cream vanilla icing on the cake? Turns out there was another person along on that beach-side science excursion. Can you guess who?

Yep. It was Mister Not-Very-Helpful "My, You're Intimidating" Government Programme For The Gifted And Talented Bloke. Which means he got to see Elder Son in full flight, being singled out of a crowd of kids years older and farther up the ladder than him.

Wish I'd been there to see it. Well, never mind. Just knowing it happened is good. I'd like to think that particular chap is now just possibly reconsidering some of his less helpful remarks. I don't suppose it's actually happening... but it makes me feel extremely good to think that it could.

One for the good guys. Nice when that happens, eh?

Claws Out

So, yesterday roundabout mid-day I got an unexpected invite from the Cool Shite team to attend a pre-screening of the clunkily titled X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie. Sounded like a good deal to me, since I was planning to catch the flick anyhow, so I went into overdrive. Arranged a sitter to arrive 1700 to be there for 1730 to 1815 period in which Natalie wouldn't quite be home, but I'd be on my way to Launceston.

The morning of English study with Elder Son was pretty cool. He read forty pages of a Doc Savage novel, then worked on his typing for an hour -- up to about 13 words per minute, all fingers being used. He was pleased because the current test/level on the typing tutor game called for a 12 wpm output, and he did better with full accuracy.

Next, we sat down and finished our examination of Tennyson's "Blow, Bugle Blow". I admit that Tennyson can be ponderous and pompous, but that particular poem is short, and evocative, and most importantly, it has elements that reach a bright eight-year old. The rhyme and rhythm are strong, sufficiently complex, and effective, and most of all the message is there to be found.

I'm particularly happy with his response to the poem overall. When we started, he was surly: didn't like that emotional poetry stuff, he said. So I pointed out that only stupid people decide they don't like something before they know enough about it to understand what they're not liking, and he grudgingly agreed that we'd look at it. By the end of the process -- looking up in the dictionary all the words he didn't know; trying to figure out why certain words were used and not others; discussing possible meanings associated with the ideas in the words; talking about personal responses and feelings -- he was pretty pleased. "Poetry is kind of like a code," he announced. "You have to read it carefully to figure it out."

Yep. That's exactly what I was after: the process of reading and thinking. Me = happy teacher.

Anyway, as an exercise he's going to memorise the poem. Then we'll get a decent recording of him reciting it, and use it as the soundtrack for a simple video movie combining images and scenes of his choice, with a little guidance. We'll see what comes of it.

After that, he wrote two paragraphs of action in which Doc Savage fought a bad guy -- but he was limited to using simple, one-verb sentences only. We've been talking about sentence structure, and next week we'll take these paragraphs and start combining the simple sentences into more complex structures. That'll let us investigate clauses, and consider the effect of changing sentence length and complexity on the reader.

A good morning, I figured.

Meanwhile, the Mau-Mau caught a few morning 'toons on ABC, then mooched around reading and playing with the dog. But after the morning of English, I hooked the boy to a math tutor programme (we're working on giving him a base of number facts -- times tables, etc -- to allow for quick mental calculation, and to set him up for more complex mathematical ideas) and the Mau-Mau and I went outside into the bright winter sunshine. We took a lot of photos.

Y'see, she's got this little red cloak and hood that she won't be able to wear much longer, as she's growing. And I figured we could make a version of "Little Red Riding Hood" with the Mau-Mau in the lead role; a personal book that she could enjoy, and practise her reading upon. We've got Sizzle the Dog in the role of the Wolf, and with a little photoshoppery, we'll fit one of her own grannies into the role of Granny. Smaller Son will probably wind up being The Woodsman.

It's yet another bloody project for me, of course, but it will be fun. She enjoyed the photography -- happily took direction, put on different facial expressions, posed as required. Is this a girl thing? Does the whole "pose for the camera" set of genes live on the X chromosome?

By then it was time to load the kids in the car, zip down the hill, and collect Younger Son from school. Shopping, yes. Post office, yes. Grab the violin instructor, zoom home again. Mau-Mau and Younger Son had their violin lessons while I chopped vegies and chicken and set up the rice for the nasi goreng. As soon as the lessons were done, we all got back in the car and took the violin instructor back to Scottsdale. (Her car is on the fritz at the moment.... sigh)

Zoom back home again. Start the bath, get the firewood in, lay the fire. Begin cooking nasi goreng. Sitter arrives. Finish cooking, feed kids and sitter... check bath... and at last, I got away.

I met the Shitesters at the cinema. It was crowded, and the local radio station was torturing four kids on stage when we arrived, making them do Wolverine impressions in order to receive CDs, or something like that. I thought there were laws against that sort of thing. I felt particularly bad for the sixteen year old girl up there, unable to stop giggling hysterically as she waved her arms around and tried to growl... and for the somewhat portly young boy at the end. They made him jump up and turn around to pose with his arms out, growling. Poor little buggers.

Then there was the movie.

Mmm. Yeah.

I stopped reading X-men sometime around 1989, when I ran out of comic-buying flatmates. (I didn't have the money for it. Probably would have spent it on dodgy stuff if I had.) I never got exposed to the whole "origins of Wolverine" thing, but I'd already seen the original X-men title spin off in about forty different directions, none of which were particularly novel or interesting.

Oddly, I once actually owned the comic in which Wolverine first appeared -- a "Hulk" comic from the mid-seventies. My dad bought it for me. I can remember thinking that "Weapon X" looked like an idiot in his yellow suit with the black and blue stripes, and the claws and all. Wish I still had that comic!

Anyway. I wasn't fussed on the film. The fx are fine, the action sequences are nice, and I really do like Hugh Jackman's take on the title character, sure. But... well, we all know from the first X-Men flick that by the end of the film, Logan has to be amnesiac, but in one piece. And we know that the recurring villain Sabretooth has to be alive and well too. So... really, this is a 'filler'. It starts in 1845, for fuck's sake. Happily, there's a rather groovy montage-of-wars sequence in which young Wolverine and his larger, nastier brother (who we know is going to be Sabretooth) fight their way through the US Civil War, WWI, WWII, and Viet Nam. It was a good way of getting close to the present, and delivering a cut-and-paste background for the two.

It still didn't work, though. By the time we were more than halfway into the film, we were still zipping through time, and it felt like a prolonged set-up. There was no sense of central conflict, no feeling of something at stake. Act One of the trad 3-act structure is the bit where you set up the main problem... and the big issue for this film is that there IS no main problem. There's nothing at stake, nobody to save, nothing to barrack for. And by the time we're finally given a villain - well, let's just say that plot twists and complexities keep pointing us in the wrong direction.

It was a potpourri of action scenes and muddled ideas that didn't really gel into a film. I'm glad I didn't have to buy my way in. I'm sure my young boys will be delighted (it's PG; no blood... which is weird) but I'm going to try to con Natalie into taking them to the cinema.

If you haven't got kids to take, or you're not a dedicated fan, this is probably not your film.

TEOTWAWKI And Tasmania

I should make you Google up TEOTWAWKI if you're so clueless that you don't recognise the acronym. But for the soon-to-be-Zombie-victims among you, I will remind the reader that TEOTWAWKI stands for The End Of The World As We Know It. Obviously, I am referring to the present outbreak of Swine 'Flu - or as our Israeli brethren apparently would have it "Mexican 'Flu".

I can understand how Jewish and Islamic folk would rather have a Mexican 'Flu than an Unclean Antikosher Stinky Piggy Flu, but... has anybody actually asked the Mexicans about this one? Do they really want their very own 'Flu?

Well, never mind.

My problem here is my wife's profession. I came down here to Taz to raise kids because frankly, Tasmania is

• off the global geopolitical radar
• not nearly as vulnerable to warming as mainland Oz
• not nearly so vulnerable to sea level rises as most of Oz
• self-sufficient in food
• self-sufficient in power
• self-sufficient in water
• not overcrowded
• not expensive (comparitively) to buy and live
• very strong in terms of social capital in comparison to most modern communities of Oz

Not to put too fine a point on it, Natalie wanted kids, so I looked into the Flinthart Crystal Ball and saw trouble a-comin' in the future. Given that Elder Son was born in 2000, I'd like to point out the Flinthart Crystal Ball was pretty f__king good... but to be honest, any damned fool who kept up with newspapers and journals could have foreseen the shitstorm which has only just begun to break over us all.

Anyway. I did the best I could, and here we are. But... I really don't know what to do about epidemics. I know what I'd like to see: Tasmania should shut the doors. Cargo in, cargo out. Nothing more -- and all cargo handling done with minimum human contact, maximum quarantine precaution. (No, not necessarily for this Piggy Flu. It doesn't look like a civ-killer... at least, not yet.)

I just can't see the government being smart enough to do that, though. And how would we prevent desperadoes from the mainland fleeing here in their boats? Be nice if we could whip the Bass Strait into a frenzy on demand, but we don't have a navy to help.

So -- if it comes, when it comes, the Next Big Plague, the long-overdue cull of humankind... I don't suppose it will miss Tasmania. And when it comes here, my wife will be out there trying to keep people alive. In contact with whatever-it-is for days on end. While I'm here at home with three kids, at least one of whom has an over-active immune system that turns even a simple head cold into weeks of painful symptoms

I know. I worry a lot. Sure. But this one... this is the one I can't do anything about. And every time I read about another outbreak somewhere, anywhere, I get a nasty shiver.

Sure hope this Mexican Piggy Flu peters out soon.