I was surprised that Dr Alex Douglas’ “bogan” comments didn’t get a mention in Crikey yesterday, so here goes. Essentially he said that Tasmania was a state with a lot of people who “wear Ugg boots, watch Big Brother and consume rubbish food, tacky clothing and [live] empty lives”.
He was emailing in reference to another PUP member, but I want to pick up on his theme rather than the particulars that lead to the comments. At first I thought Douglas was speaking about Queensland, and he struck a chord with me.
I have just returned from working in a western Queensland mining/cattle town where my neighbours earned very good money for jobs that most people could learn in six weeks: truck driving, low-level drilling, OH&S services and the like. Even the supposedly educated engineers and teachers in the town seemed to be all on Xanax or clones from some failed space invasion. They owned motorbikes and speed boats for recreation. They spoke about the commercial TV shows with rare animation. The only interesting hobby seemed to be beer brewing, which they had down to a fine art.
Conversations were always about those favourites of gregarious dills: food shows, clothes, shopping, real estate prices and the internet. The election threw them into a spin, for they were either the children of miners who vaguely knew they should defend the Labor Party or they were new to large amounts of money with no clue that they were the recipients of a lucky time — not the deserving aspirants of the Liberal Party. In either case they just didn’t care all that much.
Douglas mentioned that their lives are empty, and it is this point that really struck me, because they pass this lack of interest in ideas onto their children. There is no conversation around the dinner table of large matters. No books on the shelves that couldn’t be bought by the kilo at Kmart. The older children are pleasantly stupid — already stuck with the high ambition of playing in a rock band, working in the mines or on a station. The reality is that they usually end up at the Woollies checkout or clerking at the Target store. I was particularly struck that in a local high school of 600 children there was only one class of year 12s specifically looking at university.
We are as a nation currently in angst about our educational rankings — around 15th, with the Chinese ranked first. These parents and their offspring are the ones we are talking about. Children are almost totally reflective of their parents’ ambience and they have all stopped thinking (or more likely, never started) and their children reflect this. “Dad didn’t get past year 10 and he’s doing alright!”
No amount of Gonski money will fix this lack of academic ambition. Only a complete revolution in what society values and encourages will urge the next generation to aim a little higher than riding unlicensed motorcross bikes over public parks. Chinese parents are not perfect and indeed may be as shallow in their pursuit of education as ours are in hedonism, but they at least get their children to the point where they can make a decision from knowledge rather than pig-ignorance.
But even that is a hopeless ideal imo. The idea we should become all smart and become real arrogant and have high iqs and be all nerdy. Does anyone really think that's going to happen? Silicon Valley has that nailed in the IT area, Germany has it nailed in the manufacturing area. I think our best future is mainly just to rest on our laurels.
Why do we need so much money? It mostly just goes into real estate anyway and makes a few rich at the expense of the many. It's not even working anyway, we're going to end up borrowing at least $500bn just to keep things going. You could talk about defence and having tonnes of cannon fodder, but a few nukes should protect us for centuries.
Why do we have to be such a bunch of hard ons? Scandinavian countries live very well, and aren't.
stinkbug omosessuale Frank Castle is a liar and a criminal. He will often deliberately take people out of context and use straw man arguments. Frank finally and unintentionally gives it up and admits he got where he is, primarily via dumb luck! See here Property will be 50-70% off by 2016.
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