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Australia


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Always fancied Australia based mainly on my experience of watching The Sullivans and Crockodile Dundee, but it's starting to seem a bit mental. 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-48522729

 

Quote

A police raid on Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) has drawn fire from broadcasters and rights groups.

Officers arrived at the public broadcaster's Sydney headquarters with search warrants naming two reporters and the news director. The ABC has protested over the raid.

Police searched the home of a News Corp journalist on Tuesday, sparking alarm.

The BBC said it was "deeply troubling" for a broadcaster to be searched.

 

Don't they keep asylum seekers on an island or something and even their left wing parties make Alf Garnett look like Owen Jones? 

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Yes. I live in Sydney, in one of the few parts of the country that appears to have retained some sense of something greater than self (the latte sipping socialist enclave the People's Republic of the Inner West of Sydney), and most of Australia seems to be increasingly becoming Trump's America. In politics it's been a race to the bottom for the two main parties for awhile now, based on the need to win over marginal electorates that have a lot of right-leaning (far-right leaning in Queensland) voters, but just the general vibe of the place is pretty fucked at times - fucking rednecks.  These raids are very disturbing and demonstrate that the Coalition government here now thinks it has has a mandate to do whatever the fuck it likes to protect itself and its mates.

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Stayed for a month earlier this year driving the East Coast from Sydney to Adelaide and then staying there with friends. Loved the experience but the heat was ridiculous , and we think the BBC Farage love-in is annoying but every other advert on Aussie tv seemed to have a hatchet-faced woman on behalf of a party called ' One Nation' demanding immigrants be hung, drawn and quartered.

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I've been there a couple of times on holiday. Gold Coast and Sydney. The racism was very noticeable. Apart from that, I liked it enough though nothing like enough to want to live there.

 

I much prefer Europe and our proximity to different cultures here.

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40 minutes ago, mgw100 said:

I've been there a couple of times on holiday. Gold Coast and Sydney. The racism was very noticeable. Apart from that, I liked it enough though nothing like enough to want to live there.

 

I much prefer Europe and our proximity to different cultures here.

The same culture our own knobheads are trying to separate us from? We are a mini Australia where the Aborigines are replaced by Muslims.

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41 minutes ago, mgw100 said:

 

 

I much prefer Europe and our proximity to different cultures here.

Thats my take on the place. You can fly 2 hours for something completely different from here whereas in Australia its a right old pain getting up to Asia.

 

When we went there I was wondering whether I could live there but I found Australia boring and a bit like white america, very staid, conservative and not really living up to the hype. I didnt see much of a pub culture and everyone seems to go bed at 9.30. I only went to Melbourne and Sydney and bits in between and around so obviously not seen the whole place.

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13 minutes ago, A Red said:

Thats my take on the place. You can fly 2 hours for something completely different from here whereas in Australia its a right old pain getting up to Asia.

 

When we went there I was wondering whether I could live there but I found Australia boring and a bit like white america, very staid, conservative and not really living up to the hype. I didnt see much of a pub culture and everyone seems to go bed at 9.30. I only went to Melbourne and Sydney and bits in between and around so obviously not seen the whole place.

Cairns is boss but the best people I met weren't Aussies. 

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Melbourne is boss, more live music venues per person than any other city in the world, apparently.

You do have to have a bit of an idea where you are going though.  Which is probably why A Red couldn't find any pubs.

 

Some surnames of kids in my son's class: O'Riley, Mejhed, Ruiz, De Loma-Osorio Colarossi, Pathik, Lemke, Mejia, Papadimitriou, Vassiliadis, Rejith

 

Obviously there are some very serious issues that are miles off being resolved with the Aboriginal population.  Plus a fair bit of shit with asylum seekers, but I don't think Australia is any way more racist than the UK.  Mind you, I do live in a lefty inner city bubble.

 

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1 hour ago, Jose Jones said:

Melbourne is boss, more live music venues per person than any other city in the world, apparently.

You do have to have a bit of an idea where you are going though.  Which is probably why A Red couldn't find any pubs.

 

Some surnames of kids in my son's class: O'Riley, Mejhed, Ruiz, De Loma-Osorio Colarossi, Pathik, Lemke, Mejia, Papadimitriou, Vassiliadis, Rejith

 

Obviously there are some very serious issues that are miles off being resolved with the Aboriginal population.  Plus a fair bit of shit with asylum seekers, but I don't think Australia is any way more racist than the UK.  Mind you, I do live in a lefty inner city bubble.

 

Canada has been trying to reconcile with the native populations (Indian, Inuit and Métis) and it is a hard go at times.

 

They just wrapped up an inquiry/inquest into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

 

One of the main findings was that Canada has committed genocide against the native populations.  

 

 

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11 minutes ago, Nunavut Patrick said:

Canada has been trying to reconcile with the native populations (Indian, Inuit and Métis) and it is a hard go at times.

 

They just wrapped up an inquiry/inquest into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

 

One of the main findings was that Canada has committed genocide against the native populations.  

 

 

 

There's a couple of challenges down here. 

Firstly they were mostly a nomadic people, and there is such a wide range of indigenous languages and dialects - so there wasn't like an easily tangible culture that could be adopted.  Even though a lot of the stories and that are similar across the different peoples. 

Secondly, a lot of conservative people who are like - "it was a hundred years ago, I didn't do anything so we shouldn't have to make any effort to apologise for the past, pull yourself together and get on with it".  

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For every redneck in Australia, there is an inner-city elitist counter-balancing that.

The former are ignorant racists drinking beer agreeing with each other, the latter sit in comfortable, cloistered environments drinking Pinot Gris agreeing with each other, as they make concerned pronouncements about various social injustices - at a nice, safe distance away from them of course.

The overwhelming majority of others - we sit somewhere in the middle, comfortably and ineffectually middle-class.

The results of elections are invariably 52% to 48% or 49% to 51%.

The power base always lies in capturing the centre-left or the centre-right.

Nothing gets done or solved.
While the company is often governed by the "right", the government-subsidised media - the ABC - is ironically enough leftist in flavour... hence the recent weirdness of the government... to protect its interests... raiding its "own" media corporation.

The most recent election was not necessarily decided by redneck racists in Queensland, but more by a community that saw a coal mine not happening as 2,000 less jobs. And people in neighbouring electorates possibly voted in sympathy with that. In Australia, I think people rightly or wrongly are prepared to compromise their lifestyles, but not their livelihoods for "greater goods".

Political parties - and the talent pools within them - are woefully poor, self-serving, shallow and careerist.

For instance, Labor may well have lost the last election because their leader - sensing a formality of a victory because of opinion polls, which let's face it are useless these days - didn't think he needed to explain how he was going to economically facilitate his environmental policy.

Centrism is our greatest "problem" - as it is perhaps in America and maybe even the UK.

Redneck "righties", intellectually elitist "lefties"... they live in the bubbles that the (social) media algorithmically indulges them in.

Anyhow, there's a few random, rambling thoughts/opinions on my country.  

 

 

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45 minutes ago, skaro said:

 

For every redneck in Australia, there is an inner-city elitist counter-balancing that.

The former are ignorant racists drinking beer agreeing with each other, the latter sit in comfortable, cloistered environments drinking Pinot Gris agreeing with each other, as they make concerned pronouncements about various social injustices - at a nice, safe distance away from them of course.

The overwhelming majority of others - we sit somewhere in the middle, comfortably and ineffectually middle-class.

The results of elections are invariably 52% to 48% or 49% to 51%.

The power base always lies in capturing the centre-left or the centre-right.

Nothing gets done or solved.
While the company is often governed by the "right", the government-subsidised media - the ABC - is ironically enough leftist in flavour... hence the recent weirdness of the government... to protect its interests... raiding its "own" media corporation.

The most recent election was not necessarily decided by redneck racists in Queensland, but more by a community that saw a coal mine not happening as 2,000 less jobs. And people in neighbouring electorates possibly voted in sympathy with that. In Australia, I think people rightly or wrongly are prepared to compromise their lifestyles, but not their livelihoods for "greater goods".

Political parties - and the talent pools within them - are woefully poor, self-serving, shallow and careerist.

For instance, Labor may well have lost the last election because their leader - sensing a formality of a victory because of opinion polls, which let's face it are useless these days - didn't think he needed to explain how he was going to economically facilitate his environmental policy.

Centrism is our greatest "problem" - as it is perhaps in America and maybe even the UK.

Redneck "righties", intellectually elitist "lefties"... they live in the bubbles that the (social) media algorithmically indulges them in.

Anyhow, there's a few random, rambling thoughts/opinions on my country.  

 

 

Can’t disagree too much with your summary of the Australian political climate there Skaro. 

But Pinot Gris? It’s red wine weather!

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1 hour ago, Jose Jones said:

Can’t disagree too much with your summary of the Australian political climate there Skaro. 

But Pinot Gris? It’s red wine weather!

 

Indeed, JJ, my apologies.

I wrote Gris when in actual fact I meant Noir... and I've just made up for that, several fold, at the Union Hotel in Chapel St, Windsor.

 

Incidentally, Pinot Gris-wise, the Union is promoting a local wine maker, who has managed to get alcoholic permission close to all our hearts...

 

 

20190607_134936.jpg

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