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Some Antipodean Musings of An Octogenarian Pom
Some Antipodean Musings of An Octogenarian Pom
Some Antipodean Musings of An Octogenarian Pom
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Some Antipodean Musings of An Octogenarian Pom

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When the author reached the age of eighty, and was no longer able to travel much, he began to put a few words on paper; his motivation was to keep his mind alert as his muscles weakened. Some of these ‘musings’ attempted to be amusing, without much success. Others were reactions to articles in the Australian newspaper, in the days when he could afford to have it delivered every day. Then he got carried away and began to deliberately wear different hats; a sportswriter one day, a current affairs commentator on another day, an arrogant book-reviewer the next.

All the opinions expressed are his own, based upon wide reading and a good memory, so that ideas spawned by a book on theoretical physics began to mix with stories of the Brith Raj in India. And his sound Catholic upbringing, based on his father’s love of Rerum Novarum, began to embrace the results of living for a while in a strongly Buddhist society.

So, if you are looking for historical accuracy you will not find it here: he has kept no notes or references; what is in his head has leaked out through his word-processer. It is curiously therapeutic; a bit like going to Confession but not quite.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 8, 2023
ISBN9781398445475
Some Antipodean Musings of An Octogenarian Pom
Author

Ignatius Gee

The author is an English great-grandfather, living in Australia. Since reaching the age of eighty and finding himself less mobile than formerly he has amused himself by writing essays, pretending to be a newspaper columnist, sports writer, book reviewer, political commentator, mathematician and scientist – or whatever else took his fancy – drawing on his experiences in industry, education (as student and teacher, examiner and governor), naval rating and parent. Occasionally he has included something autobiographical, so that the reader (if ever there is one) can see what makes him tick). Everything has been written off the top of his head; no notes or reference books, so not a hint of historical accuracy, so if you are upset by anything please accept his unreserved apologies.

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    Some Antipodean Musings of An Octogenarian Pom - Ignatius Gee

    Cold Beer, Warm Heart…

    When we first came to Australia, for a three-month holiday, my wife and I stayed with our daughter’s family in Kensington. We arrived in Adelaide at about 8 a.m. and our first impression of Australia was the rugby scrum at the airport, trying to get through customs and immigration in one piece, with everyone pushing and shoving to get through first; very un-English, not forming an orderly queue. That was before the new modern terminal was built.

    After lunch I was sitting with my son-in-law in his back yard, talking about this and that while he strummed quietly on his guitar. Suddenly the back gate opened, and a neighbour came in: Welcome to Australia! he said, and produced three bottles of beer. A few days later this man’s father-in-law took us in his four-wheel-drive into the bush to show us the stone-built homestead his forebears built when they first came to Australia. So, I immediately became acquainted with two Australian characteristics: one, their open, friendly willingness to extend a welcome to newcomers; two, their insistence on drinking cold beer. (The first mentioned unfortunately seems to desert them as soon as they achieve political office.)

    Australians regard cold beer as a necessity of life and are always ready to take the mickey out of the Poms for their propensity for enjoying warm beer. This is, of course, not strictly true: English beer is kept cool in the cellar but after being pumped up and served in a glass (with a handle on the side) it is served at room temperature. It therefore has a taste, distinctive to the brand, and a young man soon learns which one he prefers. I still remember my first pint of Bent’s Best Bitter, brewed in Stockport but served at the Cheapside in Oldham: one could take a good gulp, get involved in an earnest discussion of some important topic e.g., why Latics couldn’t score goals, take another gulp etc. Consequently, one pint could last quite a while and when closing time came you felt quite mellow and happy and could walk home in a reasonably straight line, unaided. Bent’s Best cost ten-pence a pint which was quite a lot when you only had five shillings a week to spend, and a man learned to drink for pleasure, the largest part of which came from the company he was in. Behaviour remained good even when the evening wore on; it just got a bit noisier. Drawing up the beer in the beer pump helped the barmaid to develop rather muscular arms, so when she came out from behind the bar to collect the empty glasses no-one took any liberties (touched her inappropriately in the modern phrase) for fear of receiving a rather hearty fourpenny-one about the ear- ’ole. And if she warned any rowdy reveller to behave or get out, she was obeyed pronto.

    Contrast this with the Australian habit of drinking bottled beer straight from the freezer: the beer is so cold that it immediately anaesthetises the lips, tongue and throat and goes down without being tasted just as quickly as if it were being poured down the sink. And of course, the only sensible thing to do with an empty bottle is replace it with a full one. Consequently, most Australian beer tastes vile, but nobody notices, so the young Aussie only knows when he has had enough when he falls over and vomits in the gutter. (I say he, but the young ladies do it as well; it’s one way to get on the telly.) Now, just when he should be enjoying the evening and making new friends, he feels lousy and the only cure is to down more beer until he falls down again, oblivious to where he is and who he is with. After that, when the numbness has spread from his tongue and throat to the top of his head, he thinks (if that is the right word) that the only way he can begin to enjoy himself again is to start popping pills. Hence the 7 a.m. news always starts with a list of how many young men have been king-hit in Sydney; how many have been stabbed in Brisbane; how many young ladies have been photographed lying on the pavement in Melbourne; how many women have been bashed by their husbands in Adelaide, how many brawls there have been in Perth and how many hospital emergency rooms have been over-run with over-dosers. Only then can they get on with the important stuff, the sports reports.

    Perhaps I have been a bit hard on Australians, for much the same thing seems to be catching on in England and anyone who enjoys a real pint has to become a rebel and join the Campaign for Real Ale, just to get access to their top-secret list of places where such beverages are available.

    To be serious though, I really do believe that the present drug problem is rooted in the misuse of alcohol. No one with any sense will accept and swallow an unknown pill from a stranger; there is so much bad publicity that everyone must surely be aware of the dangers. But the drugs continue to be consumed, because the young people concerned, at the moment of taking the pills, have no sense. They are already stoned out of their minds and feeling lousy, and the drug-pusher offers them an easy way to get that extra lift which will keep them going till 3 a.m. And it is so easy to get addicted; "just one more and then I’ll stop" is a recipe for disaster. Becoming addicted to one thing makes a boy or girl more liable to get addicted to another: cigarettes at fourteen, alcohol at eighteen, ice at twenty. Death at twenty-one.

    When I was fourteen, I had a good friend and classmate who smoked heavily; he had an absent father who thought he fulfilled his parental duties by keeping his son lavishly supplied with pocket money. Eddie was prepared to supply all the cigarettes I wanted, just to keep him company in his bad habit. I resisted, because I feared that he would want his generosity repaid in the future in some unforeseeable way. So, when I went out at eighteen for my first pint of Bent’s Best my three companions were all smoking like trains, and each time they lit up they offered me one. I must have refused about twenty offers that night. Then when I joined the navy and had access to 500 duty-free cigarettes per month, I bought the best brands and kept them in my pocket to pass around to my oppos (not realising at the time that I was doing them a grave disservice.) Every time I met Eddie, he was either puffing away or looking miserable because he was trying to ‘give it up’. I attended his funeral thirty years ago.

    An article in this week’s Guardian Weekly bemoans the fact that the British are getting fatter and fatter; every high street is turning into a string of burger bars and chicken bars. Overeating is another aspect of addiction and is unforgivable when so much of the world is starving. Another addiction is to wealth-accumulation, which drives some people to gather (often by dubious means) vast fortunes, which they could not spend in a dozen lifetimes, while millions of others struggle to stay alive. These two, together with smoking, binge-drinking and pill-popping, are signs of an increasing trend towards self-indulgence, at least in the so-called advanced societies. If this trend continues these societies will destroy themselves. The words of Christ will come true: Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the Earth.

    There is no real antidote to addiction; the addict is always prone to sink back into old habits: the reformed alcoholic is only one snifter away from disaster; the ex-chain smoker needs only one drag to reawaken his craving. The only defence is the development of will-power, and its close relatives: self-control and self-denial, when young. If these attributes are lacking, self-respect will never develop. The four-year-old in the supermarket who whinges and whines and throws tantrums until his mother weakens and gives way to his demand for lollies, is the drug addict of the future.

    The navy gave us a tot of rum daily, at twelve noon precisely. Some of my messmates could not function properly in the forenoon, until they had downed that tot. Sometimes, when I heard the quartermaster pipe Up Spirits at 11.30 a.m. I would feel a longing that had me counting down the minutes until noon. Whenever I felt like that at tot-time I would tell the bubbly-bosun to ‘pass it round’ and then I would sit down to join in the banter while remaining dry. I was able to do this because a major part of my education, at home and in school, involved the development of self-control, based on willpower. Willpower is akin to muscle power; if you don’t work at it, you will lose it. We are all human; we all have our needs, desires and cravings, but the most important part of our education is to learn to keep these under control.

    After all, what is the use of living in a great country that affords you complete freedom: freedom of movement, freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, if you are in effect controlled by the strings pulled by some uncaring wealth-addicts who just want your money, at the expense of your health and sanity, and don’t give a damn whether you live or die?

    How on earth did I get here from cold beer?

    Climate Change

    The Earth is warming up. There can surely be no argument against that statement; the evidence is so obviously all around us. The only question is: is this warming due to natural phenomena, which we only partially understand, or is it caused by human activity? My own view is that, if or whatever natural phenomena are causing this change, human industrial activity is greatly exacerbating it.

    This is the most important problem facing mankind now, particularly as so many important and influential people refuse to accept that it is happening. It is a problem that concerns us all as individuals; we cannot rely on politicians, especially the ‘do-nothing’ kind currently in power in Canberra.

    Now, several years after I began this essay, there is a new government in Canberra, also of the ‘do nothing’ variety; the only action they will take is to put the clock back by slowing down the rate at which some states are trying to produce more power by wind and solar technologies. And now international efforts have been torpedoed by President Trump calling global warming a hoax.

    The Paris agreement was intended to limit the rise in atmospheric temperature to 2⁰; even this increase is dangerously high. It represents a huge increase in the amount of energy in the atmosphere, which will result in more extreme weather; hot days will tend to be a little hotter, hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons will blow a bit harder and shed even more rain.

    There have been forecasts of rising sea levels caused by melting ice, pooh-poohed by the deniers. This is not the worst problem: melting sea-ice makes no difference to the level of the sea; melting glaciers and other ice on land does, eventually, though much of this water may find its way into underground aquifers or remain trapped in wetlands. Bur melting ice does not all turn into water; water forming on the surface of the ice evaporates directly into the atmosphere, caused by wind and heat from the sun. The increase in air temperature allows larger quantities of this water vapour to be carried about the planet, to be deposited in huge downpours in unexpected places, when the conditions just happen to be right. So we will see an increase in serious flooding and deadly landslips, like those in Sri Lanka only a few days ago. (And in Bangladesh just as I am editing this essay. And later in Germany, where houses hundreds of years old have been washed away).) This is only the beginning; we will see a lot more of these disasters.

    The Australian Government is dithering over whether to allow the opening of a vast new coal mine whose Indian proprietors are asking for a billion-dollar handout from the taxpayer. They also want a new railway and a port built for them, which they very generously say could also be used by other people. If this plan goes ahead the huge investment required will only be viable if the mine operates for another fifty years or so. Some Australians, perhaps because they have a pecuniary interest in coal, argue that Australia’s contribution to global warming is so small that reducing it would make very little difference; they miss the point completely. The advanced countries must show the way ahead to those countries that have legitimate desires to raise their living standards to match ours, but still have a long way to go.

    I repeat; there is no doubt that the earth is warming rapidly; there is just too much evidence that it is happening now. The ‘deniers’ claim that this is a natural process, and mankind can do nothing about it. The first part of this sentence may well be true, the second is arrant nonsense. If you were in a vehicle running away down-hill under gravity you would be unable to do anything about the gravity, but you would surely try to put the brakes on. The burning of coal is the main culprit; it also causes many other problems, notably pollution. This became clear in the late 1940s with the introduction of the Clean Air Act in England; the results were visible almost overnight: the smogs disappeared and thousands of lives were saved – lives of the old and the very young who died of respiratory diseases every winter. We had to stop burning coal on our fires, under penalty of heavy fines; coalite and coke were supplied instead. We managed. The cotton mills, which were still numerous, had to find ways of firing their boilers without producing black smoke; they also managed.

    Ever since the industrial revolution covered vast areas of England’s green and pleasant land with dark satanic mills the industrialised (mainly western) nations have grown rich on the burning of coal and other fossil fuels. Now India and China and many other less-developed nations in Africa quite rightly seek to haul their peoples’ living standards up to the levels enjoyed in the west. These countries have vast reserves of coal, and Australia short-sightedly seeks to sell them even more; if they try to make progress by burning this coal then the world is doomed, not the planet but most of the life on it.

    Now the political debate in Australia is deadlocked over the latest scientific plan for the future. It is deadlocked because many politicians, notably Tony Abbott, want the plan to include new coal-fired power stations, burning clean coal to keep the price of electricity down. At this time clean coal is a myth because the technology has not been developed; cleaner coal is possible, but it is not clean enough. Abbott stopped the research grants when he was PM. Any country that can build a power station burning coal really cleanly will reap a fortune selling the technology to those power-hungry and coal-rich nations I have mentioned. So the very man who wants to encourage the use of coal stopped the very research that might have made it viable; yet he is a Rhodes Scholar and has spent time at Oxford University. One would think he would have made an acquaintance with logical thought somewhere along the way.

    When I was very small, in the thirties, and went to the Saturday children’s matinee we sometimes got a cowboy film with no Indians in it. It would feature Chips Rafferty, the big, bronzed, leathery-skinned, steady-as-a-rock fella with corks dangling from the brim of his hat. We knew these films were made in Australia because in the background there was always a little windmill on a tall lattice-mast, pumping water into a large trough for the stock. (And the cowboys didn’t have guns.) With the introduction of a generator these devices could have produced lighting as well. Also in Australia vast quantities of solar power go to waste across the continent. Australia could have led the world in generating power locally wherever it was needed, instead of wasting hundreds of kilojoules in driving it through cables thousands of kilometres long. Yet Australia slavishly followed the British and European example of generating power centrally and piping it around the country on a grid. This makes sense in a small country like Britain, with towns and cities close together, but is madness in a huge continent like Australia. It never really made economic sense to carry electric power thousands of kilometres through a cable, when a significant percentage of the power generated is lost in transmission. The overhead power lines in Australia are also very vulnerable to extremes of weather, as we have seen only recently in South Australia.

    With a little foresight a few years ago, Australia could have been leading the world in solar power generation, with a vast market for their expertise in India, Africa, China etc. Instead the Government boasted of their skill in keeping the budget in surplus, instead of investing some money in renewable energy. This short-sightedness is probably due to the 3-year tenure of a government, allied with politicians who start campaigning for re-election as soon as they have been sworn-in by the Governor-General. A government whose main priority is budgeting for a surplus every year is like a man who boasts about saving 10% of his salary every month while his children are tramping to school with holes in their shoes. If countries like Denmark Holland, Norway and Scotland can generate all the power they need from renewable technologies, why can’t Australia? Yet when a state like South Australia tries to do just that it is sledged by a Federal Treasurer and Prime Minister for putting up the price of energy and hanging a millstone of debt about the necks of our grandchildren. The worst debt we can leave them is bequeathing them a planet which will no longer support life.

    Energy is obviously too cheap in Australia because so much of it is being wasted. I don’t find it too cheap, even though we only keep lights on in the room we are using, and only use the heating/cooling whenever we begin to experience severe discomfort; my electricity bill still sends a chill down my spine. Bur I have neighbours who leave their outside lights burning 24 hours a day; others who leave their air-conditioning units roaring away whilst they are out at work, and even when they have gone away for a weekend. Our local supermarkets have twice as many lights as they need, and in the city the big shops are practically super-cooled. Then, when night falls, myriads of coloured lights proclaim the virtues of eating or drinking this or that.

    Some way must be found of convincing people that they are using a rapidly diminishing finite resource, and using far more than their fair share of it. If you have only one box of cornflakes in the cupboard and it has to last till next pay-day anyone who takes a second helping on Monday is clearly seen to be anti-social, especially when the children have to go to school without breakfast on Thursday; so it should be with power.

    In vast regions of India and Africa there are towns and villages which have no power at all; their active lives end at nightfall. Just a little electricity, locally generated, would increase their happiness and productivity immeasurably. A huge market awaits. Those countries which have invested in technologies to produce such power will prosper and grow rich; those, like Australia, who have concentrated on producing budget surpluses will have to spend those surpluses many times over, being merely consumers in that market.

    I have first-hand experience of the lack of power: in the thirties, before WW2. my family lived in a little old house in which electric wiring had been added as an afterthought. There was a single bulb hanging from the ceiling in each of the four rooms and we purchased electricity from the Corporation by means of a shilling-slot meter; my parents were on meagre public assistance (welfare they call it now) and it was necessary to make one shilling last a whole week. It was great in summer, when daylight persisted till 10.30 p.m., but in winter when night fell about 4 p.m. the lights were turned off as soon as we children were in bed, and our poor mother darned our socks leaning forward to catch the light from the dying fire. And the ever-demanding chores of sweeping, scrubbing, dusting had to be squeezed into a 7½ hour day.

    Every rich industrialised country which can afford foreign aid should be targeting it into providing economical, locally produced, renewably resourced power for those millions of people whose daily life is a struggle just to survive. Then perhaps fewer of them would be motivated to tackle the horrendous hike across Africa in an understandable attempt to find a better life in Europe.

    Wasn’t it God Who said: Let there be light?

    Those people, and nations, who think they can go on burning finite resources, continually scraping the barrel by fracking or digging more huge open-cast mines, destroying precious land which provides the vegetation which enables human life to exist on this planet, should be seen for what they are: selfish and greedy – and stupid.

    Postscript: I had just finished writing this when the Weekend Australian (3/6/17) published the equivalent of a full-page article by Clive James, seeking to demolish the claims of climate scientists. I don’t think it will cause me to change my views. Clive makes personal attacks on people whose views he doesn’t like, for example: "… people who, though they might have started out as scientists of a kind, have found their true purpose in life as ideologists and …journalists now… are so celebrity conscious that they would supply Flannery with a new clown suit if he wore out the one he is wearing now." I am not a fan of Tim Flannery, and I usually turn off the TV as soon as he appears, but I do think he knows, and understands, a lot more

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