Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and PM Scott Morrison have been telling us that we need to contain debt, and that is why those on JobKeeper must return to poverty. Frydenberg in particular has been praising himself for his fiscal bravery, and the size of his COVID-19 rescue package.
The PBO estimated that in the December quarter last year debt interest repayments were $4.1bn – the same amount it was in December 2016 when total debt was half the current level.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a commander of Ottoman forces at the Dardenelles during the first world war and later the founder of modern Turkey, has been quoted far and wide as saying in 1934:
Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives … You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours … You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.
When it opened in 1975 The Rocky Horror Picture Show was a bit of a flop, but then it rocketed to cult status and has never been off the screens since.
Rocky Horror is full of strange bits and bobs: literally in its props and costumes and otherwise in madcap humour, lashes of pop culture references and the behaviour of an assortment of loony sexually liberated characters. It seems to takes place in a vacuum divorced from both time and space and the conventions of cinema – a garish, swirling patchwork joyfully here and there.
It can’t be true. In the UK unemployment is being redefined as a psychological disorder as part of an effort to cut the welfare bill by $12 billion. And, says an article in the New Scientist (can’t find the link), the UK
joins nations such as Australia and the US in increasingly requiring claimants to comply with interventions intended to modify emotions, beliefs and personality.
They say “claimants must demonstrate characteristics deemed desirable in workplaces, like confidence and enthusiasm, in return for welfare.” Continue reading Pathologising unemployment→
