Category Pandemic
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Money for nothing
JESSICA IRVINE WROTE ON the subject of 'weaning' the nation off the coronavirus support Jobkeeper. It is less economic thought, which is her specialty, than Methodism, which is a school of economic moral order.
Because JobKeeper, as a public policy, is not a keeper. A policy that pays some people to do nothing is not a long-term plan, despite what advocates of a Universal Basic Income might say.
This is exactly wrong. It's not even about creating UBI or Citizen's Income, In fact our society pays many people very well to do nothing, for good and bad reasons, and has done, without protests or disagreement, for a long time.
Posted · Author Liam Hogan
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Agoraphobia
LIKE MOST I WAS impressed and awed at the crowds who attended protests against Aboriginal deaths in custody this weekend. It's all I can do to walk on the footpath on the way to work. If you'd asked me on New Years Eve what challenges I'd be taking on this year, I wouldn't have picked agoraphobia, but here I am, and here we all are, walking backwards away from people, trying to avoid our bosses who like handshaking and slapping people on the back. I can only admire the fortitude of tens of thousands of people facing that, as well as the prospect of arrest, capsicum spray, and a beating. I can only groan as, completely predictably, the protesters' good faith in marching is seized on in bad faith by hoteliers, wedding planners, and other people interested in getting a profit.
Posted · Author Liam Hogan
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Private Plumb
THE AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE FORCE (ADF) is now supporting the States in their response to coronavirus isolation. This includes things like transporting people, doing contact tracing, and packing Foodbank lunches, but also helping the NSW Police with self-isolation directions. The National Communicable Disease Incidence of National Significance Plan (CD Plan) provides for Defence to 'Assist the national response to a communicable disease emergency by filling capability shortfalls within other government departments'.
This is not an accidental choice of words, and also refers to the application of new powers established by law in 2018, and trained with in exercises in 2019.
Posted · Author Liam Hogan
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Working from home
IF THE TRANSITION TO mature industrial society entailed a severe restructuring of working habits—new disciplines, new incentives, and a new human nature upon which these incentives could bite effectively—how far is this related to changes in the inward notation of time?
Asked E.P. Thompson in the extremely famous journal article Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism, and his answer (to spoil a half-century old social history argument) was 'quite a bit, and also Methodism'.
Posted · Author Liam Hogan
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Carry the love from town to town
IT’S A UNIVERSAL HABIT in every era in every culture to express communal desire, keep solidarity, and drive individual courage, in music. Few of the songs I am used to humming and singing to myself are appropriate today: every one seems to call people to gather or come together. It isn’t physical courage we’re required in these times to show anyway, but social distancing demands moral, psychological, and even spiritual courage. We are each of us for the near future in our own prison of the self, but freedom is coming.
Keep Your Eyes On The Prize was one of the key songs of the United States’ civil rights movement in the post-WWII. Like us, they knew things would get worse before they got better. Like us, they knew that patience is impossibly hard. Like us, they could see a different, better world at the end of the journey.
Paul and Silas thought they was lost
Dungeon shook and the chains come off
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold onFreedom’s name is mighty sweet
And soon we’re gonna meet
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on…The only chain that a man can stand
Is that chain of hand on hand
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold onPosted · Author Liam Hogan