So what is "free speech" and does it

actually matter?

There is yet more in today's paper about the demand of our government to the owner of X (Twitter). 

"Remove that footage or face a fine!" the government is declaring. "It is violent. It is extremist. It will do harm."

The footage in question was, up to a certain point in the clip, aired on national television. It had gone around the world many times, been shared many more times before the government acted. By then it was simply too late to do anything about it.

Rightly or wrongly the owner of X challenged the move. There is now a major problem where there could have been a minor one. The government has moved itself into a position where it is actually saying, "We control social media, not you. We can decide what people will see." 

I have absolutely no issue at all with people being prosecuted for posting violent, extremist, racist or other vile footage. We should come down on them hard and fast. Whether we can control and demand the owner of X for it however is another story.  Is it something which would give a government control of what we see? Would it allow them to censor "misinformation" they do not want us to see?

It is possible it could. Under sec. 51(v) of our Constitution the government has the power to make laws about "postal, telegraphic, telephonic, and other like services". That certainly covers the internet. Imagine having the power to control the internet. The government does in North Korea. Most people there know very little about the outside world and they are not permitted to travel either. It is one of the many ways in which the government keeps such tight control over the population.

No, we won't go that far but the government is seeking to control what we see and hear. They are anxious, or so they claim, to prevent the spread of "misinformation". That can all too easily mean anything they disagree with or anything that might harm their control over us. 

I don't know anyone who disagrees with the idea that the climate is changing but I do know people who disagree with the ideas about why it is changing. Even people who agree will disagree with how it should be handled. But then comes something interesting. Ask people what the biggest problem is and those words "carbon emissions" will come up over and over again. We have to be "carbon neutral" we are told. Someone I know who works in a very senior capacity in environment, a trained scientist, told me not so long ago that carbon emissions make up 0.04 of the atmosphere - and we actually need at least 0.03 of those in order to survive. In other words it is not the problem we make it out to be. There are problems but they are not the problems we are being told about. It is convenient for the government to let us go on believing this though because they have invested vast sums of money in telling us this. This is in no way to deny we need to do something about the environment - and do it quickly - but it may be that carbon emissions are not the main source of the problems we face.  Misinformation from the government and other sources will allow us to go on believing otherwise. It may be that we are also being misled about other problems because of what the government wants us to know.

I may be very misinformed. I am almost certainly misinformed about a lot of things but I do not want to be further misinformed because the government has control of what I can and cannot see. Violence and real harm can be dealt with in other ways.  

Walking on water or

in this case on the bed of a lake. 

We have just been told yet another place in the state is now out of bounds. We cannot enter it without permission from the indigenous owners of it because it is "sacred". 

This is a recent development. The area in question has long been a major tourist attraction but visits to it will now be controlled by the "local indigenous owners". 

Let me go back to when my family was living south of the lake. The lake is, for most of the time, a salt pan. If there is sufficient rain there will be water in the salt pan. (The water is not drinkable.) 

We went to look at it. It was long trek over what was little more than a dirt track. The idea that it might be a tourist attraction at the time was something we did not even consider. The Senior Cat simply thought we should see it, as a salt pan. 

I remember standing there with the faintly pink salt feeling all crunchy under me. Mum, rightly, made us wear our solid school footwear. The salt is hard on skin. It can cut you. I remember the eldest boy of the family we went with rubbing his finger along the salt and getting a "burn" mark. He said it stung "like crazy". 

When it is dry the glare from the sun on the salt is intense. It seems to smother you. The whole area is almost always dry. It is not friendly country. I did not like being there however "interesting" I might have been supposed to find it. 

Donald Campbell broke the last wheel driven land speed record on that same lake a couple of years later. It was almost certainly the most likely place to break it. When we were there you could look out across the lake. It's big. It covers an area of over 9,000km sq.  If you stood where we were standing the other side is over the horizon but it is really nothing more than a shallow depression below sea level far inland.

It has now become a "sacred" place that you can only visit it if guided (at a cost) by the local "indigenous" owners - the Arabana people.  One of these indigenous owners was interviewed on the news last night. If I had passed her in the street I would not have recognised her as "indigenous". This morning my friend M... left me a message asking if I had seen the clip. His tribal grouping comes from further south. He does not claim to know anything about the Arabana tribe but he made the comment, "Interesting it now has such cultural significance when money can be made out of it."

There have been some visiting restrictions for a number of years but, until now, they have simply been for safety reasons. I suspect there should be restrictions for safety reasons - particularly if there is a wet season. Whether there should be for "cultural" reasons is something I am much less certain about. 

There has been a backlash over this. It is not the first "sacred site" where people claiming to be members of a local indigenous tribe have sort to restrict access to an area. Access will sometimes be granted if money changes hands. Parks and wildlife reserves are gradually being taken over. Perhaps that can be a good thing where truly indigenous people take over and know their own land and how to manage it. More and more often though I doubt how much indigenous heritage some of the activists have and how valid some of their demands are. Do we really go on denying 97% of the population access to areas in order to appease the 3% who claim to be indigenous? In reality it is far less than 3% who make these demands and others in the group seem not to even understand what the fuss is about. They no longer follow a traditional lifestyle. The folklore of their past has been diluted by present knowledge. 

It seems to me that there is a very small group of people who are intent on using their assumed cultural heritage for other purposes. What concerns me is that we could actually lose it all as they pursue their demands to stay still and not move on.  The idea of standing at the edge of that dry, slightly pink and salty lake forever does not appeal to me.

 

Free speech or something else?

I am wondering whether I will get kicked off X for posting this. Will there be a knock at the door because the government has decided I am a danger to society and need to be put away?

More seriously, is social media really out of control? I doubt it can be stopped now. The lid is well and truly off the container and the contents are spilling out. We can now comment to everyone on things we could just mention only to people we actually saw during the day. Is it any wonder Elon Musk is ignoring the government's attempt to make him take down what is considered to be "violent" footage of the stabbing of a priest.

It was vile. It should be taken down. The problem however is a little bit more complex than the media and the government have been suggesting. Yes, you could try and take it down - but by the time those responsible for taking such material down it has already been seen. It has been seen and shared again...and again...and again. It will also be shared in slightly different ways which makes it even harder to ensure it gets removed. I am not sure it can even be removed completely. I doubt it is a simple matter of just pressing a "delete" button. If it was we could have an army of volunteers removing such material...or could we? 

You see it is my opinion (and undoubtedly the opinion of almost anyone who reads this) that we do not need to see little video clips of priests being attacked.  Someone else obviously felt differently. They filmed the event and then posted it...and it spread from there. They may even have manipulated the images they posted. I will never know. Other people obviously thought the clip was worth "reposting" and suddenly the whole thing was out of hand. 

Is there software which would prevent such actions or do people somewhere have to go through the millions of posts and remove the images? Can you just remove the first post and thereby make it impossible to keep passing it on? I don't know.

Even if it is possible I doubt that removing such material is easy. Yes, we need to try. If we do however then we also need to ensure that mainstream media cannot post such material either....and there we start to have a problem. It is called "censorship" because it is a very, very small step from demanding that something actually harmful is taken down to demanding something be taken down because it harms the government of the day. 

We need to do something about the problem but it is going to be much harder than demanding Mr Musk and others simply use the delete button.  

Going to live in another country

by choice is one thing. Going to live in another country because you must is something else.

An acquaintance of mine is about to move to America. It is a work choice for him. His wife has shrugged her shoulders and taken the line, "I married him. I go with him. I think it will be interesting."

No, it won't be forever. It will be for several years. They regard it as something of an adventure. 

There are three children. None of them want to go. The eldest is fifteen and he is implacably opposed to the move. He has his friends here of course but he has also been mature enough to realise that his education will be disrupted. Yes, there are undoubtedly good schools in America but he has been aiming on a course here which is very, very difficult to get into and a disruption like this will affect his chances. His grandparents were telling me about this yesterday. We discussed whether they should be offering to give him a home while his parents are away or whether he should perhaps board at school. (He could.) His sister wants to stay too. She is a child who, although popular enough, has only a few friends. The idea of a new school in another country "where everyone is already friends" does not appeal. I can understand that too. The youngest child is in the last year of the primary school. When I met him at the home of his grandparents he told me quietly, "I don't want to go either. It's okay for Mum and Dad because they are grown ups."

Their parents say it will be a good experience for them. They will experience another culture, a different education system, make new friends and much more. Perhaps. I don't know. 

It made me think of all the children who have been uprooted and forced to live somewhere else...forever. Their parents have migrated, willingly and unwillingly. The children have had to follow. Sometimes children have even had to go alone. 

Middle Cat's late father-in-law was just fifteen when he left Cyprus and came here. He came alone. He did not speak English. For him it was the opportunity of a lifetime. He wanted to do it. He was ambitious...and he did well. Over the years he brought out his siblings and then his parents, sponsoring each one of them in turn. It was hard work but they saw this country as one worthy of moving to permanently. I know many other people like them. 

I also know people for whom the move was too much. They have gone "home". Not so long ago I helped clear the house of an elderly woman who went "home" to the Netherlands after many years living here. She had no family here but there was family there. The family ties were stronger for her. 

Middle Cat asked me later where I would live given the choice. I don't know. It's difficult. It is not easy to answer the question of "where is home?" Is it family, friends or a place? 

National service needs to be

reinstated - and it needs to be compulsory.

I know that won't be a popular idea with some people but I am watching with some alarm two young people who are taking a "gap year" and doing absolutely nothing with it. One of them does have a few hours work now and then. The other is still doing nothing at all. He is spending his days out on his skateboard with a few mates. His parents seem to just accept this state of affairs.  

National service might just pull both of them into line and give them a purpose in life. National service might actually provide them with a way of contributing something.

I mentioned this to a neighbour who was watching the children tear up and down the street on their bikes and boards. This particular neighbour did a stint in the army. He doesn't like the idea of pushing people into military national service but, like me, he thinks a year in some form of national service between school and university is a very good idea. It could even be two years where a teen has no idea what they want to do with their lives and they have no qualifications.

What is wrong with expecting young people to contribute something? Do we really want bored teens hanging around with nothing to do? Isn't that how the worst trouble starts? 

Yes, I know there are teens who have worked incredibly hard through school. They have put their all into getting the results they get. Yes, they need a holiday because everyone needs a holiday sometimes. But do they need an entire year (plus several months) before they start again?

We didn't have gap years of course. They were unknown when I was that young. (It was an awfully long time ago now.) We couldn't "defer" either. You went on with your studies or you went to work. It was not nearly as easy to get any sort of unemployment benefits either. Things have changed. The current system is possibly too lenient but it may also be more realistic. All sorts of jobs once available to school leavers with few or even no qualifications have gone. It seems to me that reason is reason enough alone to introduce a form of national service which would provide, at very least, basic skills for some. This may be nothing more than the basic skill of turning up to work on time and following instructions but it would be a good skill to learn. 

And yes, I would include both sexes in national service. Why not? It seems to me that almost anything would be better than watching the two young people I know becoming more and more dissatisfied and bored with life. They are coming to believe that the world owes them a living...and it doesn't.  

When did "school formals"

become a "thing"? 

There was nothing like that when I was at school. Out in rural areas the oldest boys would often leave school as soon as their last exam was over. They would be wanted back on the farm to help with the harvest or some other urgent work. Many of them still do it. The only boys left would be those from the "roving population" - the sons of the teachers, the bank manager, the policeman and so on.  The girls might stay a bit longer. The last week of the school year was generally not one in which a lot of schoolwork got done. I spent my last year in a rural school doing a stock take of the school library, ensuring that everything was returned and much more. It was a job which needed to be done. I had a helper but it was my responsibility. 

If anyone had suggested we have a "school formal" with the girls dressed in evening gowns and the boys in suits we would have laughed. We had "school socials" where there was some dancing. At one school it was only "square dancing" because the Seventh Day Adventists objected to ballroom dancing. Everywhere else it was ball room dancing. If that sounds strange it was considered the place where you managed to learn the basics before heading off to the Saturday night "footy dances". Those venerable occasions consisted of "Mrs B...." playing the piano and "T..." on the drums. Occasionally "P...." might play a piano accordion. People danced waltzes, the Military Twostep and the Gay Gordons.  It was considered "good fun" and a bit of exercise.

What people did not do was dress in ball gowns. I have never owned anything remotely resembling a ball gown. I went to school socials in a cotton dress in summer and a woollen skirt in winter...and so did every other girl. There was the occasional ball and then the debutantes would wear their "deb dresses" but the rest of us did not wear anything more fancy than we wore to church on Sundays.

Now it seems that girls need evening dresses. They visit a hair dresser and a nail salon. Boys need suits and bowties. They go to the even in a "limo".  This can happen even in areas where money is tight. It's a big event.  Why? 

I mention this because one school here has announced that such events will no longer be part of the school year for them. I imagine there were many parents who breathed a sigh of relief when that announcement was made.  It really is not the "rite of passage" it has been made out to be. I was convinced of that when there was a complaint from someone who hires out the gowns some of the girls wear. She was saying that if other schools followed the first one then she would go out of business and that hairdressers would lose money.  If ever there was an admission that these things have been developed in order to make money then surely that is one? 

I see absolutely nothing wrong with telling the students to organise an event within a budget. It might just be possible to do something for far less but participate more and have much more fun. After all most city kids don't need to go out and drive a combine harvester when their last exam is over.   

Over on Substack

Emma Darwin has started a thread about rereading books from childhood. She has said she is concerned about rereading "Charlotte Sometimes" (Penelope Farmer), wondering whether she will still feel something for it.  She remembers it with "deep scariness". I can understand that. I was a bit older than her when I read it but it is a very unsettling book. There is a copy somewhere on my bookshelves. The fact that I am not absolutely certain just where suggests that it is a book I too would hesitate to reread, at least for now. (There are too many other unsettling things in my life at present.)

But Emma's thread started me thinking about the books I have reread as an adult. Was I disappointed in them? I have to confess here that I have a reasonable collection of children's books published post WWII up until around 1975 and some more besides. I collected them deliberately because they were disappearing from library shelves and I felt some of them at least would be worth keeping. Among those are books I have reread and still enjoyed.

I still love "The Woolpack" by Cynthia Harnett. Yes, there is a lot of history in that book and that might be a major attraction for me now as it was when I first read it. At the same time Nicholas is a real boy, keen on getting away from his lessons if he can. He is starting to grow up. His mother is - shall we say "conscious of her position" as a wealthy merchant's wife. There are all the little details of Nicholas's betrothal and more. Nicholas and his friends are resourceful and determined. It is a good book on more than one level. The Senior Cat read it when he first gave it to me as a child and would sometimes suggest I encourage a child to read it. It is that sort of book. What's not to like in rereading that?

I have reread "The Little White Horse" (Elizabeth Goudge) too. A couple of years ago I, at the insistence of others, sat and squirmed through the film version. The film version was appalling. The story line was like a different story altogether. There was absolutely none of the "magic" in it. The characters seemed like entirely different people. I rarely like film adaptations anyway but if I had been a child and come across the film before the book then I may not have wanted to read the book. That would have been a waste because it is a good book, a very good book. 

Neither of those books are available at the local library. I am glad I have copies and that I have copies of other books by Cynthia Harnett and Elizabeth Goudge. I could go on talking about other authors who mean something to me, authors like Elinor Lyon (what's not to like when you find your own name in a book?) Yes, I know her books well. They were very popular with the Whirlwind and her school friends. I wrote "not quite sequels" for them to read as well. 

It was not just Emma's thread which started me thinking about this. This week I borrowed a Marjory Allingham from our library. I had to go into the Large Print area to find one because the books there tend to be of less recent publication. The reason I wanted to read one was that someone I know has started a "club" on her knitting site which also involves the books. I have no intention of joining the club but I know people will be talking about the books as well as knitting. My education in crime fiction (which I confess to loving) had a gap in it. I had never read an Allingham. I am reading it at present and I will finish it but I doubt I will ever bother with another. So far it is predictable, although perhaps not quite so predictable as a Christie. It is not a book I would reread. I would return to the books of my childhood long before that.