MERCY AND COMPASSION

Just watched the late night news. Not a good idea. The Dept of Immigration or one of those was explaining why they couldn't let a family come visit their grandchild whose mother had died giving birth The baby has muscular distrophy. The father is out here alone with the little one. But we are not allowing the family to come visit because they might sneakily stay here. One reason they might do that is that they are refugees in Quetta which the aforesaid dept deems so dangerous that the family might not want to go back.
Bad enough and shameful enough all round. THEN add to the miserable pernickety nature of this vile era - an AMERICAN is doing the speaking for the Department. An AMERICAN is explaining why we are not giving visitor's visas. Who the hell are you, Mr Foreign Spokesman. I am willing to lay money  ( and I don't gamble) that you fly 'home' when you please. What a lousy place we are becoming.
Add to that, contact today with a lady who was washed out in the Brisbane flood and is now left stranded by the insurance companies, the charities etc - and I am suffering from a nasty taste in the soul tonight.

Vivid Sydney - Light

Vivid Sydney - Light

Sounds and looks like fun BUT carbon points ??? Why am I then sitting huddled over the radiator and walking through a dimly lit cottage because it's too expensive to have a real life ? Methinks we are being taken for a ride.

2011 News: Australian hearts need to be humane

2011 News: Australian hearts need to be humane

BLOG IT ALL.

The Koori History Website - Martyrs in The Struggle for Justice

The Koori History Website - Martyrs in The Struggle for Justice

CENTRELINK. LPG GAS. CARS.

Not even going to protest tonight. Just say CENTRELINK and COUNTRY ENERGY and CAR REPAIRS. Put them in the same paragraph as part time work and pension and they make their own protest. 

$220 million chaplaincy plan is a decison that does not compute | Daily Telegraph Maralyn Parker Blog

$220 million chaplaincy plan is a decison that does not compute | Daily Telegraph Maralyn Parker Blog

Disabled can't be forced to work | The Australian

Disabled can't be forced to work | The Australian

A BAD NIGHT

I have been known to whinge and whine and take the negative view of life but last night was a Rare One for me. It was one of those domino effect tumble downs of OUTRAGE.. Woke me and kept me restless for a goodly part of the night. Before I mated up in my late 50s, I would have got up, made a cup of tea, looked out my window upon whatever solitary night world I was in and settled myself down. Now I tend to try to remain in bed thereby threshing the body of the person beside me with outraged kicks and wriggles and possibly mumblings. 

I have woken with less mental disturbance and a slight quirk of smile but I had best get the rest of the Protest down here before it rots within me.

The CanCan participants  are still dancing past: starting with the truly pathetic palliative care that my sister received in Port Macquarie. In the night they moved onto women being isolated in the bush by their menfolk and through to the Budget and the harsh treatments of the lowest in our social pecking orders.
A seething hot bed of resentments it was - sometime after midnight.
I must have subconsciously burned through a good few of them during the tumultuous night because I am now struggling to recall them. Mind you, if i put a match to the first one - the one about the neglect by authorities of my sister - luckily the enormous love of a family was available to her - Well if I put a match to that, I can probably start a bushfire off again.
I might even do that. I am home for days this week due to one of the household vehicles being in at Navin's for repairs, leaving me as the non-worker at home several kilometres from home. Not too bad a thing because its giving me time to check out the state of my spiritual property.
It doesn't look too well tended just at the moment. Best get this mess out in the open.
I am right royally p***ed off with stinting on heating because of the electricity costs. Its as loopy as when they wanted us to drink our own urine in Toowoomba due to the Drought which ended - no thanks to our pee drinking or not washing our cars or having deep luxurious baths.
I am distressed by the JOB NETWORKS and their generic ' American' techniques. Their complete failure at finding jobs for people or doing anything other than causing distress and further shaming.
Paying rent which is app 50% of our income. That's a protest. The elimination of public housing. The destruction of caravan parks.
The lack of public transport East and West.

I guess what's wrong with me is simply the powerlessness of being able to fix things.

GENERAL WHINGE AND LADY WHINE AND HOME MADE BIKKIES

Should have been writing here for days to get the pissed offedness out of my system. That's what i started the page for. Harm reduction. I was at the Uniting Church hall in Bello the other night, reading the notices up on the noticeboard. Its a very active church that does a lot of good deeds and has a progressive attitude to the community So I was skimming through the notices impressed with the blankets for African people and the home visits of the frail and elderly - when I came to the BKKIE run for prisoners.
Down at Kempsey is a new gaol. No new hospitals of course - but a nice new prison. Seems the good people of Bellingen uniting Church reach out to the gents in there. They write letters and do other things - including BAKE BIKKIES, Bellingen people bake great biscuits - but not any more. NO HOME BAKED BIKKIES for the prisoners DUE TO OH&S reasons. Only store bought Bikkie - which btw equals 99% of the time - Overseas owned.
Only store bought packet biscuits are allowed to be given to Kempsey Prisoners. For their own health and safety. Are they expecting the traditional file hidden inside an Anzac biscuit? Or what ? Did some Bello Grandma add extra greenery to the ingredients ? Are they in the wallets of the Companies.
Unfortunately, I think they are simply insane. 

10 YEARS

10 YEARS IN PRISON

'Youth' ditched from NSW Cabinet - Heywire (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

'Youth' ditched from NSW Cabinet - Heywire (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Your Disaster Survival Kit: How to Prepare for Uncertain Times by Rebecca Solnit

Your Disaster Survival Kit: How to Prepare for Uncertain Times by Rebecca Solnit

THE END OF MARCH

Another month ends and been in too much shock to whinge a lot but its upon me now. Damn the Council that won't dynamite the URUNGA SEA LIDO and give us a swimming pool again. And wants to pull out fine old trees and create an URBAN CAFE PRECINCT in Bellingen. I feel really gripey at the moment - a mixture of grief, legit protest and a grumbling nature. 

I have to find a new place to live and go through all the Dept of Housing begging and pleading and Pension explaining and I feel sick with the very prospect of it. Promises evaporate and dreams shimmer away. 

The Phone crackles and I can't hear people talk. The mobiles pick up only at non specific times in non specific places and Internet Broadband is available only right near the towns and telephone exchanges. 

I feel old and tired and over IT. Just for now. 

I am going swimming with my girl and her girl and maybe the tide will be right. Maybe not. 

Tonight I am to do a work dinner for Izzy and I might - or I might not. I don't like the Welfare Industry. 

Open letter: Talking about an Indigenous tomorrow - Unleashed (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Open letter: Talking about an Indigenous tomorrow - Unleashed (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

nellibellingen

nellibellingen

Germany’s solar panels produce more power than Japan’s entire Fukushima complex | Grist

Germany’s solar panels produce more power than Japan’s entire Fukushima complex | Grist

Our Generation

Our Generation

Nuclear Nightmare | Common Dreams

Nuclear Nightmare | Common Dreams

Exodus overwhelms Tokyo airport

Exodus overwhelms Tokyo airport

An American Uprising — YES! Magazine

An American Uprising — YES! Magazine

Eviction on Rooty Hill man doesn't compute - Local News - News - Mt Druitt Standard

Eviction on Rooty Hill man doesn't compute - Local News - News - Mt Druitt Standard

FUNERALS

I have recently taken out 2 insurance plans. Probably DUDS as well but the power of the afternoon TV has won. Its combined with my own horror at the cost of having my parents cremated. Each afternoon, serious and concerned advertising people tell me about the appalling burden which will fall on my 2 children when I perish. So I took out 2 mini policies . One for each of them JUST TO COVER THE PROBABLE COSTS of disposing of me.
I do't usually do insurance. except the compulsory car one.
The Ads in the afternoon take it for granted that it will cost at least $5000 to see me off. Therein lies the ugliness of it all. WHY ISN'T THAT ROTTEN TOOTH BEING PULLED OUT ?
In Grafton there was a company called LEAVING LIGHTLY which I gather used cardboard coffins. $5000 for some sad smiles, a few serous faces, a lavish piece of woodwork fancier than anything i my house and 45 minutes in the kind of building I don't even rent or enter by choice.
I have told my kids to do it as cheaply as they can and use the few thousand dollars, if possible, for themselves.

Years back, a doctor in Bellingen told me he was leaving Australian medicine the moment they called it an INDUSTRY. And leave he did.  Funeral trade is the same.
I want a box ( cardboard if possible), an AA type sendoff in the local hall and a plot out at Urunga on the hill looking out to sea. $5000 - is a rip off.  OBSCENE.

Thank goodness for young  German women who raid neighbouring gardens in the middle of the night. 

crippencartoons

crippencartoons

Wisc. Conservatives Trample Democracy: State Troopers Dragging Protesters Out; Wisc. Dems Head Home After GOP Union-Busting Measure Rammed Through | Economy | AlterNet

Wisc. Conservatives Trample Democracy: State Troopers Dragging Protesters Out; Wisc. Dems Head Home After GOP Union-Busting Measure Rammed Through | Economy | AlterNet

EWU | 15 Styles of Distorted Thinking

EWU | 15 Styles of Distorted Thinking