After the Italians, Spanish and Greeks – let’s stop stereotyping the British

Does the UK's distaste for European rulings really show anti-Europeism?

One of the quips that are going around in Italian newspapers at the moment when they discuss the UK breakup with the EU is ‘Fog on the English Channel.  The Continent is cut off’ to demonstrate the way the United Kingdom sees Europe.

Well, I have been ranting against the anglophones writing about the false stereotypes of the Italians being lazy and using German money to have siestas and holidays and avoid taxes.  Well now I am doing the reverse.  Stereotyping the British (OK let’s say English as I am not sure how the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish feels about it) as people who are disdainful of the continental Europeans and are totally up themselves again is as wrong as all the trite stuff about the Spanish, Greeks and Italians.

As I said before, behind every stereotype there is a grain of truth.  Yes there are some Italians that don’t pay taxes, and sponge off the system and there are some English that hate and feel superior to continental Europeans and think that the sun shine out of their arses (and most seems to write in the comments sections of the UK’s newspapers online versions).  But are these the main characteristics of both populations?  I think not.

One article that confirm this for me was written by Beppe Severgnini (in Italian). Severgnini knows England well.  He was the London correspondent for a major Italian newspaper.  He also worked for the Economist writing in English about Italian affairs.  He still comments on the BBC and he even got an OBE in 2001.

In this article titled: “But the English really don’t mind Europe” he outlines that while there is a very vocal europhobic minority in the UK, most recognise the benefits of being part of the UE.  I don’t agree totally with everything he says, but I agree with most of it.  So I translated it here.

If the European constitution was a bobsleigh race, a very crowded bobsleigh, almost a bus the English would be those who control the breaks.  An vital role undoubtedly.  The problem is that our friends on the other side of the Channel  don’t break only after the finish.  They break every time when the rest is pushing at the start, and this understandingly pisses off the rest of the crew.

The tendency to make a melodrama, something that Italy has exported everywhere else with success – should not make us think that the European Union is finished as we know it.  But there is no doubt that in that Brussel’s dawn on that Friday the 9th of December something  important has happened.  With his veto, David Cameron did what many of his predecessors just threatened.  If Europe wants to run, the UK wants to get of, and to remain in the sporting metaphor we could remind her of this: Jumping off a bobsleigh at full speed there is the risk of getting hurt.   The European structure tends to proceed after shocks.  The second world war, the crisis of the 70′s, the end of communism.  Only then Europe finds the courage of going forward (the community of coal and steel, the common market and the expansion).  It is happening now.  Faced with the frightening debt crisis and the clear inadequacy of the Euro, the EU has decided to create new rules and create a non deficit union.  London, as we know said no.

If I had to say synthesize my puzzlement at this in three words, I’d say: what a shame.  This is my feeling of someone who has been regularly in the UK since 1972, when Eastbourne and Brighton seemed to come out of a Graham Greene novel, and since then – also thanks to her entering the EU in 1973 – I have seen her becoming more open, more exciting and more sure of itself. I know the British too well to underestimate them.  I know they are capable or reinventing themselves, to surprise themselves and us. That is why I hope they will reconsider.  At this point I hope that they will really have a referendum on Europe.  Not only for a union with no debt – which paradoxically thanks to them will become reality much more quickly – but to the UK’s membership of the Union itself.  Because it is now time to get out of the great ambiguity: In or out.  Not even Andy Capp after three pints of beer would choose to sit on the edge of the bobsleigh.

If the ‘big divorce’ that some of the British press is discussing should eventuate, as I said before it would be a great shame.  Non only because acrimonious divorces tend to be more common than those who are amicable, but also because both parties lose out.

While Paris and Berlin may not be happy, London is the real capital of Europe.  It’s the city which is more lively, soft, deep, open crazy and cosmopolitan of the westernmost  section of the massive Eurasian landmass.

The United Kingdom is linguistically, democratically, culturally, artistically, journalistically, financially (take note of the order of these adverbs) our periscope on the world.  Being insular is only a stereotype and a geographic feature.  The UK never did insulate itself, except in some moments of history, such as the Napoleonic wars of just after the Second World War.  It was left to books and jokes made by the British themselves to spread the myth of the “British isolationism” proud to have their diversity confirmed even if it didn’t exist.  In reality, this diversity is no different from differences of any other European culture that makes Europe much more interesting than places such as the USA midwest.

The British are not non-Europeans.  They are the most Europeans of all.  They love to look out as they suffer from claustrophobia.   The wariness towards Europe is not because it is too big,  but because it can be is too small and restraining (ie regulations from Brussels).  A statesmen (and David Cameron still has to show he is one) has the responsibility that here is strength in numbers, and when you choose to stay together, knowing that you can get lot in return you may have to give up somethings.  The young British PM should lead the nation, not to follow the instincts of a relative and temporary majority.  Perhaps he may find, even if the so much feared referendum on the EU was going to be held, that the British would be much more far sighted than most imagine.

Forget the ‘little Englanders’ afraid of innovations. They seem to be many because they are very vocal, but I am convinced at the end that they are a minority.  Some minor upper class people from the country, a slice of the Petite bourgeoisie with their newspapers, many good pensioners in love with their garden hedges.  As Will Hutton wrote some years ago the rest know that they are equipped for the global market.  The Capital (London), the capital (City trading), the airports, the jobs (from soldier to consultant), the culture, the music, the sport and the language are already international.

Many British, especially the younger generations used to travel and exchange know that today’s Europe is both a necessity and an opportunity.  It is also a risk of course.  But believing to become  a local version of New York or Hong Kong is much more of a risk.  Because behind New York you have America.  Behind Hong Kong you have China.  Behind London there is Surrey, or the whole of Europe.  Time to choose where to turn.

You can follow Beppe Severgnini on twitter @beppesevergnini

The Italy Eurozone crisis – Part 3. Germany doesn’t want to be the Lombardy of Europe.

When I used to work at the Victorian Ethnic Affairs Commission, in the halcyon days even when the Federal Liberals liked to talk about multiculturalism, my boss used to say: ‘behind any stereotype there is a grain of truth’. It has been a factor in my life that stereotypes were always somewhere. Being born in ‘cosmopolitan’ Milan but living amongst provincials in Bergamo. Being from the north of Italy and hearing lots of prejudice for the southerners.   Living in Australia and hearing Europeans generally believing of Australia as a pleasant place to live but without culture and racist. And of course plenty of stereotype in Australia about Italy.

I remember talking about this to a psychologist who told me that our brains are wired to stereotype. Our brains like order. And allocating characteristics to certain people create some sort of order. Often stereotypes also makes those holding them superior, so it makes us feel better.

As I mentioned before the euro-crisis allowed the stereotypes to run wild with impunity. The age old belief that people living below the Alps, Pyrenees or in the Mediterranean generally were lazy, and were on some sort euro gravy train being sustained by hard working northern Europeans was wildly mentioned. Even by people that I thought had a bit more sophistication in economic knowledge, or at least were on the ‘left’ and while would be aghast in stereotyping gays or women, were very happy to label Greeks and Italians with all type of negative attributes.

At this point I will say that Italy is may main area of interest. Other Europeans I can’t vouch for. And I also won’t be blithely blind at the shortcomings of successive Italian governments, and a large part of the electorate that has allowed them to make decisions that have positioned Italy in the situation it finds itself at the moment. But the issue here is that if you want to criticise Italy, at least try to look at the issues. A glib statement of ‘Italians are lazy’ or statement of the kind really are ignorant ones.

Wealthy Italy

The issue that people forget is that Italians are not lazier than others. Quite the opposite. We in Australia have seen literally thousands of examples of Italians who faced with little prospect decided to leave their country of birth, and their families and travel on the other side of the world to work hard in the cane fields of Queensland, or the building sites of Sydney and Melbourne to re-build their lives. But many parts of Italy are extremely wealthy. Just look at this map which shows the gross domestic product per inhabitant in purchasing power. This maps show the Europe of regions rather than states, and you can see that regions like Lombardy and Emilia Romagna are as wealthy as many Landers in Germany and the London area. In fact, apart from the south Italy is not that bad. We see Germany and France having all these talks. But Italy is the third largest economy. You don’t become that by taking many siestas. But the problem with Italy, is that the wealth is concentrated in the north (as the map shows) but also the disparity between wealthy and poor people is one of the highest in Europe.

Germany is right. They don’t want to become the Lombardy of Europe

Over the years the north’s wealth has been used in well meaning measures initially to develop the south. Unfortunately by the 80′s many of these funds were misused for politicians to buy votes and in worst cases assist local organised crime. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Second Italian Republic with the dissolved of the Christian Democrats – Communist Party blocks resentment grew in the North and this gave rise of the Northern League a party that nominally is working towards secession for the Northern regions from Italy. I do wonder whether Merkel is against the idea of providing bailouts funds not only because of the inflation issue, but also because she doesn’t want what happened in Italy to happen in the whole of Europe, that is a ‘German Northern League’ because of resentment of Germans in paying for others in the Union. The Italian journalist Gabrio Casati makes a similar argument in an article (in Italian).

In essence the German position is very simple: Solidarity doesn’t exist without responsibility. It is not possible, because it is not fair that we all share something that hasn’t been produced together without allowing those who are paying to have some control to those who spend. Does this remind you of something? It should (for Italians at least) because in reality Berlin is saying one thing: We will do whatever is necessary to save the Euro, 50 years of integration (and our exports) but we will be never become the Lombardy of Europe. We will not sign blank cheques for failing economies

On the other hand if Italy uses 10 years of imposts at 2% to finance a current unproductive expenditure from its southern regions, instead of lowering the debt in the first place, she has as a country no legitimately ask for assistance. If anything it should be Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia Romagna that should ask some return for the money successive Italian government threw to the wind by to keep votes in the south. But no one, including the Northern League that supposedly was supposed to look after the more productive parts of Italy (but instead became ally of  Berlusconi) did anything. They didn’t make a parallel to how Milan was the Berlin of Italy, something that would have made the politicians perhaps realise to change its financial responsibilities, and change the politics that discourage growth, and is destabilising the whole continent.

So where to now

I have read many left commentary about the measures taken by the Monti Government (such as those of the Purple People for instance). I may disagree with those measures as well. But Italy decided to be part of a currency and a system that is marked influenced and capitalist. If you take that path you dance to the tunes of the banks, markets, and rating agencies. If you don’t they will punish you and that’s what happened to Italy. In my opinion there is no choice in the immediate future than take these measures and cop it. Because otherwise you go bankrupt and discussions about merits of the Eurozone etc. go out of the window as people scramble to save the furniture. But is there a different path?

A de-facto pre-unification Italy?

While many may think Italy as being an old country, in fact it is relatively new one being unified in 1861. Before that the north of Italy was part of Spain, France and at the end the Austro-Hungarian empire. A famous Italian journalist Gianni Riotta who tweeted “Born Italian, grew up American, then European, will die German”. Many commentators are writing that Merkel is being resistant in providing money to struggling economies because she wants other eurozone countries to copy Germany’s budget discipline, so that their borrowing is kept under control. So are we going to have a new Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina of Austria, Empress of Mantua, Milan, Parma and Grand Duchess of Tuscany?

Well of course not, I am being facetious. But it wouldn’t be the first time that Italians would take orders from the north.  Germany doesn’t want to be the Lombardy of Europe. But I am sure Lombardy doesn’t want to be in the Empire of the Euro dictated by other governments.

If Italy doesn’t want to be part of a more austere financial system I think that’s fine. Go it alone. But I hope the divorce is amicable.

Italians, let’s give the French and the Germans the arse (translated from Gianni Greco’s blog)

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I have been reading a lot about Italy and the European financial crisis, mainly from financial journals and mainstream papers, both in English and in Italian.  But what Italians that are not strictly ‘journalists’ think of this issue?  I came across this blog called “L’ombra del dubbio” where the author, Gianni Greco, writes about it taking no prisoners.  I have translated the post to the best of my abilities.  Even if I don’t agree with it (I suspect it is also what we Australians call a ‘stir’) I wonder whether these sentiments come close to what many Italians think.

Recently they have kicked us in the balls with this fucking Europe telling us what we have to do and not to do which pisses us off and humiliate us with sarcastic smiles and they dragging us along like a ball of shit at their feet.

‘Italy like Greece’ they say disparingligly. But we are proud of it! Us Italians, and Greeks have given you civilization, you ugly smelly barbarians! We have given you art that you pilllaged and more enough culture to bury you all. What do you have? Let’s see the Gioconda? Oh really?

Yes, OK, we italians can be dickheads. Distracted, disorganised a bit uncouth and shitty, but this comes from our creativity that is within us since Caligola made his horse Senator, or earlier, when Romulus and Remus a she-wolf found them and suckled them or even earlier when the Etruscan entertained themselves by reading livers. But what we can compare this? Some idiots with horns on a hat?

Now you think you are the Gods of the old continent only because you fuck Carla Bruni and you have the ‘Bunds”? If we come back to our Lira, the good old inflationated Lira with which we could buy so many things. If we start to print it again by ourselves we can regain our pride trumpled by your banks, and we can start again do things by ourselves instead of being dictated by you,  and finally we can all give you the arse.

They tell us that if we got out of the Euro wold be a tragedy, but what more of a tragedy would be that what we are in at the moment? Should we have a go? C’mon let’s be a bit reckless! Yes, but who will tell Mario Monti Well…I always wrote to Monti, and he always responded….by saying nothing.

So Italians! we are pissed off! Tell the French and Germans they can stick their measures!

Ah…Ten thousand lire…. beautiful.

The original post in Italian can be found here: http://lombradeldubbio.blogspot.com/2011/11/ma-tornare-alla-lira-e-andare-in-culo.html

Who’s that fat bloke running?

Concentrating putting a foot in front of the other

I waited until I got my ‘official’ photo before I was going to write about my City2Sea run.  Unfortunately not all the photoes that were taken were that complementary.  As I was concentrating on the run I wasn’t conscious that a photo was going to be taken, otherwise I would have tried to run sideways so that my fat gut was facing the camera, rather than being on profile. So I picked this one because I am the main subject, as in the other ones I was part of a crowd.

Anyway, there is no hiding that I am yet to achieve my ideal weight.  According to the ‘Body Mass Index’ calculator I fall into the ‘obese’ range and the maximum weight in my range would be 87 Kg. which would be a substantial 21Kg weight loss from my present 108 Kg. and considering I am the typical ‘smell food and gain weight’ type of person that target looks pretty much out of range.  However that doesn’t mean that I just give up an stuff the nearest Neenish Tart into my face.  I will try to drop a Kg here and there and see how far I go.

And going to things such as the City2Sea is part of that plan.  Since I started training for it I have lost 6 Kg.  Having an aim really helps me getting motivated.  When I felt that I couldn’t be stuffed I then thought that I needed to keep to the schedule if I wanted to complete the run.  Also you may have read a previous post about this run, where I wrote that I participaed in the City2Surf in Sydney almost 20 years ago.  I can’t remember how much time I took in that run, but the fact that I am still able to run that distance and not feel totally shagged at the end makes me feel that I still an quite fit for my age.  Sure,  I didn’t actually set the world on fire.  If you look at my overall results  in my age range (50-59) out of 626 runners I came 422th but the main thing is arriving and feel comfortable afterwards, which I did, as you can see from this photo taken after the race.

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The run itself was pretty good and I didn’t go out really quickly early so i was able to keep a good pace throughout.  The event was very well organised and  I am planning to run it again next year.  It didn’t have the same sense of event that I remembered from Sydney.  However the City2Surf has been going on for 41 years and attracts almost 80,000 participants, so we may have to give it time.

I was also able to exceed my target for my chosen charity as you can see here.  So I take this opportunity to thank everybody who donated.  And special thanks to Alex that dis so all the way from the UK.  The wonders of modern technology!

Now that I am not exercising to the same intensity as when I was following the training schedule for the run, the challenge is not to slowly gain the weight that I lost but lose some more With Christmas looming and holidays etc. the discipline to run for 70 or 90 minutes is a cinch, compared to being presented with sumptuous plentiful food.  I just need to remember that an extra slice of pudding is worth half an hour of hills running.  That should standing me in good stead.

The Italy Eurozone crisis part 2 – We may not agree with it – but Italy’s new government is legitimate.

The Italian political system, mixed with the Byzantine machinations that characterise it baffles people living in less complicated democracies.  For instance, reading English speaking papers it seemed that Italy under Berlusconi was in a virtual dictatorship. Yes he had conflicts of interest big as three continents being the owner of the major TV network and also being the leader of the  government who runs the other most watched network.  But the state owned TV and Radio did criticise the government, many times and mercilessly.

Now it’s happening again.  Some English speaking commentators (mainly left leaning it seems) have now portrayed the new ‘technocrat’ government as some sort of coup d’etat where unelected officials are now running the country.

However this is not the case.  What happened in Italy is exactly what the constitution states it should happen.

Prime Minister Berlusconi lost the confidence of the lower house and therefore didn’t have the numbers to govern and therefore resigned.  Then the constitution places the responsibility of creating a new government to the President.  Article 92 of the Italian constitution specifically states that it is up to the President to appoint a Prime Minister.

In previous occasions there would be long and protracted negotiations amongst all parties to finally arrive at a majority.  But as the markets were tearing Italy apart and there was a risk that Italy would default, President, Giorgio Napolitano acted quickly.  Again under the Italian constitution the President has the right to appoint five Senators .  This is usually because of their contribution to Italian society (a bit like the House of Lords in England) but as the interest rates to repay the recurrent debt was rising astronomically every minute,  Napolitano made Senator  (and consequently made him eligible to become Prime Minister) someone who he thought could stabilise the situation which was Mario Monti.

The other reason why this move is not undemocratic is that according to section 94 of the Constitution “a government must have the confidence of both houses of parliament”.  Therefore ultimately it is up to the representatives both in the House of Deputies and the Senate that decide whether this technocrat government will be supported.  In fact the Northern League has already stated that they will not support this new government.

So, we may not like the fact that this government is made up of bankers and financiers, that , like the rest of the EU, Italy was forced to this because it has to dance to the tune of the markets and its capitalist rules.  But it is not a dictatorship or undemocratic.

 

 

The Italy Eurozone crisis part 1 – Introduction and latent prejudice

Certainly it’s not fun times for those who possibly will be affected if (as some doomsayers are stating) Italy will be responsible for the end of the financial system as we know it.  However for someone like me with an Italian background, who knows the language, is interested in politics and is so far relatively secure in the economic haven of Australia, it is fascinating times.

The events that are now involving Italy have made me think of a number of issues.  And of course this has lead me in thinking about the blog.  However the choice was writing about everything that I am thinking in a huge blog that no one would read or write a series of shorter blogs, so I am going to the latter.  In this first blog I am writing about something that has somewhat irked me.  Especially from supposedly ‘left wing’ commentators that I thought should have known better.

Latent prejudice – the stereotype of the lazy Southern European vs the virtuous Northern one.

The circles where I roam are of my kind. Pinko latte sipping inner suburban left. And in the main I feel comfortable with that.

Still there is deep inside some of them an undisclosed sense of anglo prejudice that like a type of original sin cannot be erased.

I have encountered this on a number of occasions. One common example is when people hearing my accent ask me ‘where I am from’. After my response many exclaim “But you don’t look like an Italian” (I am 6’1″ had fair hair – now mostly white – and have green/blue eyes). So if I feel mischievous I ask “How does an Italian look like” and watch them wrestle with the realisation that their progressive mind set had actually a stereotype of Italians being all short and dark.

And now with the European Crisis, some of the commentary coming out of some left leaning commentators are leaving me with a sour taste in my mouth.

It was an article by John Weeks in the Social Europe Journal that echoed my thoughts succinctly. He writes that much of the commentary, including from centre left newspapers such as BBC Business Reporter Laurence Knight recognised this fact.

The Italian government’s debt, at 118% of GDP (annual economic output) is certainly high, even by European standards.

But dig a little deeper, and the picture changes.

Unlike their counterparts in Spain or the Irish Republic, ordinary Italians have not run up huge mortgages, and generally have very little debt.

That means that according to the Bank of International Settlements Italy as a country – not just a government – is not actually terribly indebted compared with other big economies such as France, Canada or the UK.

Moreover, the large debts of the Italian government are nothing new. It has got by just fine with a debt ratio over 100% of its GDP ever since 1991.

The main reason is because – unlike Greece – Italy is actually quite financially prudent.

The government spends less on providing public services and benefits to its people than it earns in taxes, and has been doing so every year since 1992, except for the recession year of 2009.

So all this lazy analysis of lumping Italy and Greece is just inaccurate. Instead Knight properly analyses the situation. The economy is so weak. And Italy is plagued by poor regulation, vested business interests, an ageing population, and weak investment, all of which have conspired to limit the country’s ability to increase production. Not a great picture but at least accurate.

A more direct attack on the Lazy Italian stereotype was given by John Weeks writing  in the Social Europe Journal He states that the narrative has been that…

Italy is in trouble because of greedy, lazy and over-paid workers, and the pay they have been awarding themselves ill suits their southernly station in life (and the European Union).  In the context of this feckless working class behavior, one would expect to go to the statistics and discover that wage costs in Italy have “over the past 10 years” been rising faster and above those in Germany, the home of hard work and employee discipline.

Alas, one would be disappointed, as the table below shows.  In 1997 unit labor costs in Italy stood at about eighty percent of those in Germany, and ten years later, they were, well, about eighty percent.  Through the late 1990s and early 2000s the ratio actually declined, before returning to slightly above four-fifths.

But, of course, even if Italians were not paid more, they should not have been because they were “doing less work”.  Again, the statistics disappoint, because Eurostat (the EU database) reports that in 2009-2011 Italians in full time employment, public and private, worked a lazy average of 38 hours per week, compared to a robust 35.7 for the industrious Germans

Of course all this perception has been fuelled by Berlusconi extravagant lifestyle that will be remembered for years after he has departed the scene. His behaviour just confirm the stereotype of Italians being only interested in hedonist pursuit and not being really serious.  Berlusconi was portrayed in the Angloshere as a sex mad corrupt PM. Why would Italians vote for him?

One of the great benefits of the web is that we can now read stuff written elsewhere that wouldn’t be seen on a daily in Australia.  Two of the best journalists that can explain Italy to the Anglosphere are Gianni Riotta and Beppe Servegnini as both have lived, studied and worked in the USA and the UK for a considerable amount of time (you can follow them on twitter: @riotta; @beppesevergnini) Riotta writes :

Voters were captivated by Berlusconi’s anti-establishment war cry: “I am a self-made man, not a politician!” They loved his unbridled optimism, his populist style…..Berlusconi’s lifestyle was frivolous and excessive. The leftist papers regularly trashed him and his sex parties. (Indeed, it was how the world came to learn the meaning of “bunga bunga.”) There were the groupies, the prostitutes, the shiny dancing poles in his villas. The scandals never impressed his supporters, but they did not hurt him, either. At last count, Berlusconi and his staunch ally, Umberto Bossis Northern League, enjoyed 35 percent support in the polls — not bad after a 20-year run.

Another good analysis of Berlusconi’s popularity was very well explained by the English historian Paul Ginsborg  who now lives and teaches in Florence (This is the Italian article translated from the original German) where he explains that :

In a country, where small business is a very large proportion of the economy, Berlusconi represents tha self made man, someone to be admired, someone that started his raise from the lowest steps. The small business person, even the most insignificant is typical of Italy. In their eyes the state is an ‘enemy’ that prevents them to make money.  Then there are many women working at home that sit in front of the TV more than three hours a day and tend to vote en masse for Berlusconi.  And in the north is not only small business people that vote for him, but also factory workers and employees of micro firms. Then there also conservative Catholics that while don’t like his moral indiscretions, vote for him because they see him ‘better than the Communists’.

So ti conclude there are a complex series of reasons why Italy is in the current situation.  And not because of a glib stereotypical idea of  Mediterranean southern Europeans. Now THAT’S lazy.

Hey Guys..anyone want to donate to a charity while I run?

I you read the previous post you know that I am training for the City2Sea Fun Run.

Part of running this (apart from proving to myself I can still be relatively fit, even if overweight) is to raise money of the charity of my choice.  It is sort of part of the Movember thing, but instead of growing a moustache I am running (much to the relief of my family).

The charity I have chosen is the Mental Illness Fellowship of Victoria.  This organisation is Victoria’s leading membership based not-for-profit organisation working with people with mental illness, their families and friends to improve their well being.

So this is a brazen request to donate some money.  But how can I do this I hear you cry?  I may have never met you!  Have no fear.

The people at the City2Sea have organised everything.  Once I registered for the run I was given a little website where people can donate with cards B-Pay and all these new modern fangled things – http://www.mycause.com.au/mycause/raise_money/fundraise.php?id=49127.

This will also give you a receipt so you can claim a deduction come tax time.

So please anything will be appreciated!

Yours in exertion.

Guido

 

City2Sea fun run. My chance to re-live my past and raise some money for charity as well.

Maintaining fitness for me has been always a bit of a battle.  From being a fat child, then a fat teenager I managed to be thin and fit for my early adulthood, until having a child and being caught up in the day to day activities and preoccupation of life made me abandon the strict regime of pears, apples and brown rice and exercise that involved running, going to the gym and a ‘abs only’ session of Fridays followed by more gym and a swim.

My body is very happy to gain weight but it is very reticent in losing it.  So I have been watching my weight and going to the gym but the results were somewhat disappointing.

So when I saw on the Sunday Age that they were organising the Melbourne version of Sydney’s City to Surf (now termed in a mobile text sort of way ‘City2Surf’) with a ‘City2Sea’ my thoughts went to when I did the City to Surf a long time ago.  In 1992 in fact.

Me (on the right) and my friend Phil at the completion of the City to Surf at Bondi. 16 August 1992

That event still remains in my mind as one of the happiest things I did in my life. I trained for it, I flew to Sydney and it was my first big fun run with heaps of runners, jazz bands and people watching runners on footpaths. The other thing is that I always had unhappy of memories of Sydney as being the city of ‘first impact’  after I migrated to Australia.  But participating in this fun run  therapeutically  changed the perception I had about the city forever.  Interestingly I also experienced one of my happiest event of my life occurred in Sydney 14 years later when Australia qualified for the World Cup in after three decades of bitter disappointments.

In those early 90′s days as I stated I was super fit and the thinnest I have ever been.  But that was almost 20 years ago.  How would I go now in advanced middle age being 50? with some extra weight to boot?

But I am giving it a go.  Probably unwisely I decided to follow the City2Sea suggestion for training at the ‘intermediate’ level thinking that going tom the gym twice a week, running for half an hour on Sundays and riding my bike to work every day would have got me in good stead.  However it has proven to be somewhat harder than i though.  Some stages (like running up hills, or running for 80 minutes) are a reminder that perhaps my body is not like it used to be.  But it has given me the impetus of  exercising and so far I have lost 4Kg.

This fun run has also given me an opportunity to raise some money for charity.  I decided to raise some funds for the Mental Illness Fellowship of Victoria.   I don’t have any mental illness myself, but I have experienced fairly intense periods of unexplained anxiety in the past, so I had a brief glimpse of perhaps how people who do have mental illness can feel (and much worse that what I have experienced) and if I just felt unsettled and unhappy for those brief periods, I couldn’t imagine how dreadful it would be to be like that but worse for ever.  A disease that is unseen and hard to diagnose as well.

So… if there are any readers of this blog that would like to help out you can donate through this website.  http://www.mycause.com.au/RunforMentalHealth

As my training progresses I will keep in touch with this blog.  Wish me luck!

Blogging is not in anymore

I have been thinking how I am not blogging as much anymore.

And lo and behold I came across an article that listed one by one all the reasons why I don’t come here to pour my thoughts as much.  This link was provided by a new blog by the journalist Annabel Crabb, who was wondering  whether she was starting a blog when everyone else were abandoning theirs.  Of course Ms. Crabb is a different kettle of fish (sorry….I’ll get my coat) ahem… by the fact that she is a paid journalist and her job is to give analysis of events, while the majority of blogger did it as a hobby, and if there isn’t any major focus it is easy to just let it lapse.

Going back to the article it cites why blogs are fewer than before and many are inactive.

”Microblogging platforms such as Tumblr have been a great success because these sites tend to be used by people re-sharing images and quotes, rather than writing high-quality, in-depth blog posts,” Experian’s Matt Glasner says.

Who has the time and patience to pore over a 500-page critique on the refugee crisis when you can spit out a quick status update on Facebook or a witty 140-character tweet?

This is true.  But for me is also the fact that life, and my motivations and interests have moved on.  I never intended or wanted my blog to be read by millions, and it was really a way for me to place in order many of my thoughts in some sort of order, and I often wrote thinking no one would read it.  On the other hand I know that people that I know have read this blog and this sort of stops me from being outlandish and maybe go over the top in case I risk offending someone.

Believe or not I have been blogging almost continuously for some time.  I can’t pinpoint the date when I started (as my first blog’s host went belly up and I lost all my posts) but In do remember it was when Simon Crean was opposition leader so it must have been in 2003.  And that’s the other tale.  When I started blogging I wanted to do something a bit different, something that would make it interesting to read. So my intention was to comment of ALP politics from the view of a humble rank and file member (my first blog’s name was Rank and Vile..ha ha ha hilarious).  But slowly my interest in the ALP and then mainstream politics started to wane until I lapsed as an ALP member.  I still continued to write about politics but I always found that there were other bloggers that were writing what I thought much better.  Now I am basically fairly disinterested in mainstream politics altogether.  So that’s not a huge topic of conversation fro me anymore.

The other passion is football (aka soccer).  I have written about it, but I am absolutely ignorant about tactics, systems and players.  My main interest is how the sport is being seen as a foreign sport, and how it somehow allows the anxiety of many Australians about ‘foreign’ cultures to come out without the risk of sounding xenophobic (which it is).  But you can write so much about that without repeating the same argument.

So I could turn this blog into a reflection of being a cantankerous middle age men, which I am becoming.  But really, unless you are a skilled writer it is better to read professionals in places like the ‘Good Weekender’ in The Age which do a much better job.

So where to with this blog?  I am not really sure.  After all this years I would feel sad to just abandon it.  Although it would be also be wrong to keep it barely alive through false pretenses.

There is no need for ‘Primaries’. ALP can be more democratic now.

There is a line in David Bowie’s song ‘Fashion’ that says “They do it over there but we don’t do it here”.  Well it seems that our politics seems to be caught in the ‘fashion’ caper.  Abbott’s tactics seems to mimick the USA Republican Tea Party strategy of search, block and destroy, while according to today’s Gillard’s speech the ALP is seeking to introduce a USA style primaries system to select candidates for the elections.

This is not new of course, it was an idea introduced by Bracks/Carr/Faulkner review after the elections that in a way we can say the ALP ‘lost’.  The idea is to ensure that those who may not necessarily want to be a ALP member can have a say in choosing a candidate.  As an ex-ALP member, who left partly because I felt that the Party wasn’t that interested in hearing members’ ideas,  I can see a few problems.

I have seen examples of branch stacking and manipulations of branch numbers in order to favour a candidate.  What is to say that these sorts of shenanigans wouldn’t occur by registering ‘ALP supporters’ it would be even easier that stacking mambers.  Also while I don’t agree with Senator Conroy o a few things (except that he is a true football believer) I agree with him that such a move would devalue the idea of being an ALP member.

The fact is that big parties attract people attracted to power.  I think that it is a bit more exposed in the ALP than in the Liberal Party.  As someone who lives in  the Federal seat of Batman I remember that back in 1995,  national secretary Gary Gray threatened to install Martin Ferguson(who has NSW right pedegree) through national executive intervention if ALP members in Batman decided  to vote for a different preselection candidate.

But the process was also tarnished by the usual wheeling and dealing and stacking by other candidates.  Sometning that leaves the rank and file somewhat alienated.

The other reason why people may want to join the ALP is to contribute to its policies.

One way to do this was to join a Policy Committee to formulate policies and motions that would then be brought to conference.  Of course they had to go through a conference ‘Agenda Committee’ that would decide which motions were to be debated and which wouldn’t be.  While the sound of being on an ‘Agenda Committee’ sounds as exciting as searching for fleas in a dog, it was extremely important for factions (and associated ministers) to have representatives there to ensure that motions that were favourable to a faction or another would go through,  and in some cases collude if the motion was seen to controversial.

Often these type of motions wouldn’t even go as far as the Agenda Committee.  That is because ministers would ensure that friendly members would be present in policy committees to ensure that unfriendly ‘radical’ motions were either watered down, postponed ad infinitum or even better abandoned.  You knew how the wind would blow.  The Environment Policy Committee in the late 80′s spend lots of time for a forestry policy and even now I remember a young Peter Batchelor in his job as Socialist Left ministerial gatekeeper absolutely flying off his handle in rage about it in a SL meeting at Trades Hall, calling the policy (to protect native forests) irresponsible, unrealistic and with no concept of the realities of being in government etc.

Back in June Ian Munro wrote an article in The Age about why ALP members left the party, and in there he mentioned something that the ALP did before:

A network of policy communities concerned with social issues such as health and law reform typified the party during the 1970s. They were active and they linked Labor to community activists, offering a “community of support” for its ideas.

“They were issues-based groups that offered innovative policy thinking that was able to be picked up when Labor got into office,” .

One of the beneficiaries of that work was former Victorian premier John Cain, who speaks of the “prodigious” policy development that preceded his time in office.

I do remember that time because it was when I joined the ALP.  Community groups were invited in developing policies and many of these ideas (such as the ground-breaking Flora and Fauna legislation) were formulated from this process, even if the participants were not ALP members it gave the party considerable energy and purpose.  The difference now however is that Labor has abandoned these groups, seeing them as another pressure group instead as their constituency.  Consequently we see Julia Gillard glibly talking about the value of work and setting the alarm early, and these ex-allies going to the Greens.

Therefore the path to rejuvinate the ALP is not by using primaries.  That unfortunately smack to me of the usual quick fix solution that has characterized many of the directions of the ALP lately.  Connecting to progressive groups, involve them in the process of policy making, instead of policy being directed by focus groups and the editorials of the tabloid media is, in my opinion, the way to go.  Not all the policies may be accepted. The ALP is a mainstream party that needs the votes of the middle ground, but it will make a party eneregised and full of people that want to contribute, and also it is likely that from that group of energised people a few good representatives for parliament will also spring up (of course if they are given the opportunity to stand).  Representatives much more in tune with their communities than some union officer parachuted from afar.  But it is hard work.  Is the ALP up to it?