Childhood memories up in flames

In 1982, I was six years old and we lived in a cul-de-sac called Nicholi Crescent in Wagga Wagga, Australia. Everyone knew each other - we used to play tennis on a makeshift court painted onto the road by a neighbour, safe in the knowledge that no cars would ever speed through. At the end of the dead end, there were acres of long grass - we played there too, never thinking of the possibility of a snakebite, in pre-nanny state Australia. These days, the long grass has been replaced by houses, the cul-de-sac bulldozed into a street, although it's still called Nicholi Crescent. A snoop on Google Street View shows that our old house still has the terrible yellow 1970s glass on the front, although the magnificent Nicholi gum tree, the one in which I got stuck in 1986, is gone.

One warm Thursday night in 1982, we got home from late night shopping to find the end of Nicholi Crescent on fire. Everyone was staring from their front lawns as the fire brigade went to work. I even remember what I was wearing - pale blue pedal pushers and a blue floral shirt handed down to me from close family friends with slightly older daughters. My photo ended up in the local paper, the Daily Advertiser. It was a picture of me, my mother and the old lady next door with concerned expressions on our faces, but nobody was hurt and nobody lost their home.

It was terribly exciting. 

Being in the paper was akin to being famous for a few days in Wagga Wagga in the 1980s. The next day, I got to wear my pink dress to school - unafraid of burglary, the windows were left open when we went shopping and my uniform, lovingly, nerdishly laid out for Friday, reeked of smoke. I had a great story for class news that day - a fire, the newspaper photographer, my pink dress in a sea of blue and yellow checked school uniforms - I loved the attention.       

But that was 38 years ago. I can't remember what caused the fire at the end of Nicholi Crescent but neither can I remember any discussion of climate change. Throughout my Australian childhood, serious bushfires across the country made the news in summer, there were long, hot days, and droughts. But this summer's fires and temperatures have gone to the next level. This time, bushfire season started in September, which is still spring in Australia. 

It has been relentless. For many farmers, droughts have become the norm rather than the exception, and yet still, Scott Morrison refuses to accept that the climate is changing, that it cannot be ignored as a factor in these horrific, destructive fires. 

In 2013, the CSIRO (Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) released a report which found that Australia can expect higher temperatures, more extreme heat and longer fire seasons. Then, in 2014, the CSIRO released a report that found since the beginning of the 20th century, average annual temperatures have increased and, crucially, in the 50 years leading up to 2014, temperatures increased at twice the rate than in the previous 50 years. Alongside this increase, rainfall has decreased. The data is real and there was a time when it wasn't being ignored.

In 2011, Prime Minister Julia Gillard introduced a carbon tax - in three years, this tax helped reduce carbon emissions but in 2014, Prime Minister Tony Abbott repealed the tax and ramped up coal production and carbon emissions have been increasing ever since. The summers keep getting hotter, the coral of the magnificent Great Barrier Reef is suffering a visible extinction event, and this year's bushfires have, at the time of writing, destroyed more than 900 properties, killed nine people with four people missing, and burnt more than 5.1 million hectares. Oh, and funding for the CSIRO has been cut by the federal government, which should surprise nobody who knows about this wretched government's anti-science, anti-environment agenda.

 It is no longer terribly exciting. 

The fire at the end of my street in 1982 happened at a time when there was limited awareness about the human impact on climate. It all seemed so innocent at the time but we had no idea that we were contributing in ways big and small to the situation we have today. 

It's easy to mock Greta Thunberg for saying her childhood has been stolen. It is easy to say that she should be in school, that she is being manipulated by powers bigger than her, but she is right to suggest that economic growth is meaningless if it comes at great environmental cost. Instead of directing ire at a teenager (and in some vile cases, expressing a desire to inflict physical violence on her), that energy would be better spent finding solutions.

Unfortunately, I can't see the Australian government stepping up any time soon.

_________________________

If you're feeling powerless to help Australia, especially from other countries, here are some links where you can make donations, although it would be nice if the federal government stepped up and ensured adequate funding made its way to the states. If this summer is any indication, Australia will not be able to continue to rely on volunteers to back up the full-time firefighters. Scott Morrison's thoughts and prayers can, with all due respect, get in the bin.

Red Cross Bushfire Appeal 

New South Wales Rural Fire Service

Victoria Country Fire Authority

St Vincent de Paul

The Lions Club appeal for the north coast of New South Wales

Port Macquarie Koala Hospital

  

Photography by Kim Newberg

What would happen if Jeremy Corbyn becomes Labour leader?

The Honourable Member for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn, could end up as the leader of the Labour Party in September. If this happens, delight and horror will ring out around the country, possibly in equal measure.

This week's vote on the welfare bill may well be the nail in the coffin for the leadership campaigns of Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall, all of whom abstained with the hope that a bunch of amendments will get through. It's a risky strategy because, aside from the amendments not dealing with some of the more awful aspects of the welfare bill, Labour will be left in an awkward spot if some but not all of the amendments are passed. What then? Do they go ahead and vote for a bill with a few tweaks or vote the whole thing down if they can't get all the amendments passed?

If the majority of Labour's MPs let a slightly tweaked bill become law, that is not going to placate the people, both in and out of the party, who are siding firmly with the 48 MPs who voted against the bill this week. Corbyn was among the 48 rebels and this has given his campaign for the party leadership new vigour.

Nobody seems more surprised than Corbyn himself that he is now a realistic contender for the Labour Party leadership. By his own admission, he threw his hat into the ring to reinvigorate debate rather than with any real hopes of winning the damn thing outright.

The fragmentation of Labour and the resulting arguments the leadership contest has spawned has led to much speculation over whether the party can ever win again if it shifts too far to the left or the right. Tony Blair was a master at finding the middle ground. He then took the party possibly further to the right than it had ever been before, but he is still hailed as an electoral hero by many.

But since Blair's time in office ended, there have been growing murmurings about whether there is an appetite for a centre-left party to govern the UK. Some will say the Green Party is the obvious choice and will despair that more people don't vote Green, while others find aspects of Green policy, such as their war on air and road travel, to be a leap too far to the left but they would rather like to vote for a party that preserves things like the NHS, the BBC, state education and housing benefit for under-25s. Some would deride these people as champagne socialists, although they are more likely to simply be realists who happen to own a car and like to take a holiday abroad once in a while.

A sober analysis of this year's election results is needed. The numbers reveal that 36.9% of all votes went to the Conservative Party. Of these, there would be lifelong Tory voters, people who figured there was no point voting LibDem, swing voters, voters genuinely convinced that the Conservatives can manage the economy properly, and UKIP supporters who thought better of it in the privacy of the polling booth. Labour trailed in second place with 30.4% of the vote.

It is the rest of the results that make for interesting reading. UKIP were a distant third with 12.6% of the vote - as well as the stereotypical UKIP voters, plenty of disillusioned Labour voters went purple this year. Some are Eurosceptics - and this is a significant element of the population that Labour will need to consider if they are serious about winning the 2020 election - and some ex-Labour-now-UKIP voters genuinely think Nigel Farage's party supports working class people in a way they feel Labour does not.

Meanwhile, the hapless Liberal Democrats managed 7.9% of the vote and the Greens 3.8% - if Labour were able to better appeal to these left-of-centre voters, they probably could have won the election, albeit by a tiny margin given the first-past-the-post system. But seriously, the craven pandering to the Tories by the LibDems in the last Parliament should have been a gift for Labour.

Then there is the loss of Scotland, formerly safe Labour, to the SNP. Nicola Sturgeon led a highly effective campaign to appeal not just to Scottish nationalism but also to sell the party as a way more credible, anti-austerity opposite than Labour. Now Parliament is back in session, it is hard to deny that it is the SNP that looks like the strong, coherent opposition party right now.

On top of all this, while the 66.1% voter turnout was considered high, that means 33.9% of eligible voters didn't vote. This can be arrogantly dismissed as an acceptance of the status quo or it can be a sign that a large proportion of adults in Britain did not see the point in voting. Would anything change, regardless of how they voted? Was there any real difference between the major parties?

On balance, it appears there is a not-insignificant number of people in Britain who don't want to see the country resemble East Germany but would welcome a credible centre-left alternative to the current government.

The NHS is a good case in point for a desire for sensible centre-left policies. Poll after poll shows that people from across the political spectrum are keen to keep the NHS free at the point of use. The need for reform in the NHS is also widely acknowledged and accepted, but Labour has done an appalling job of showing people how the ongoing reforms of the NHS by the Tory-LibDem coalition and now the Tory majority government are doing more harm than good and have made the NHS less cost-effective and more bureaucratic than ever. Like the LibDem failings, this should have been a gift for Labour at the last election. Hell, ex-Tory leadership prospect Michael Portillo is on the record back in 2011 as saying that David Cameron and Tories lied to the people of Great Britain about their intentions for the NHS because they knew it'd be electoral suicide.

If Corbyn can provide a compassionate and cost-effective alternative to the destructive Health and Social Care Act of 2012, that alone would make him a very popular Labour leader. And the same goes for the welfare bill - it is one thing to take a stand with 47 rebel MPs against what is largely terrible legislation but it is quite another to put forward a bold new proposal that doesn't throw the vulnerable under a bus, doesn't penalise the millions of people in work who rely on benefits, and shows a genuine commitment to job creation.

Would it be so terrible if Corbyn led the Labour Party? Or would it be like Michael Foot all over again?

What I do know is that the left can be easily disappointed in their leaders. There is a tendency to place heroes on pedestals - so ironically anti-egalitarian - and this gives them a long way to fall for even the slightest transgression. Barack Obama, Ed Milliband and Julia Gillard are examples of heroes of the left who, despite varying degrees of success, have invoked serious disappointment among some of their supporters. If Corbyn, as Labour Party leader, shows any signs of compromising with the centre-right factions of the party - even if this means preserving his leadership - I predict he will face a barrage of criticism from people who hitherto supported him, just as surely as he would be crucified if he released a manifesto that the mainstream media deemed to be too socialist.

Corbyn will face a delicate balancing act if he becomes leader of the Labour Party. How he manages to walk this tightrope might ultimately depend on how much he wants to lead the party more than how much his party want him to win an election in 2020.

Why I'm still a feminist: Part 2

Following on from yesterday's International Women's Day blog post, in which I looked over assorted feminist rants I wrote in 2012 to see how far we've come (Hint: Not far enough in many cases...), I am now casting my beady eye over 2013's blog posts. My International Women's Day reflection for 2013 seems to ring true today, sadly.

"My feminism is better than your feminism" reflected on how women harm each other by turning feminism into a competition. Sometimes some of us will have to agree to disagree on certain issues. This does not mean healthy discussion should be shut down. It does mean that more will be achieved when there is mutual respect.

January 2013 was also about pap smears and cervical cancer - this is an issue very close to my heart, among other parts, as early detection of pre-cancerous cells back in 1997 probably saved my life. This is where Australia is leading the way - pap smears are advised 18 months after you first have sex or once you turn 18, whatever comes first. But the UK lags behind with early detection and, as a result, women under 25 are dying unnecessarily. More still needs to be done here, I am sorry to report.

I joined in the feminist fun of writing the terrible Nadine Dorries a letter from my uterus. I am quite sure she never read it but the good news is that she seems to have piped down, at least on the issue of reproductive rights. She has, however, made a fool of herself in many other ways since then.

Welfare reform and sexism intersected with my piece on the "woman with a womb like a clown car", representing as she does a tiny minority of benefits claimants. It remains to be seen with the General Election looming in May as to whether whatever damn government we end up with examines the benefits system with the right mix of commonsense and compassion.

And I probably alienated myself from some women with my dismissing of Seth McFarlane's "I saw your boobs!" song at the 2013 Oscars as a fauxrage. There is now at least one fauxrage a week as people become more and more determined to find things by which they can be offended and have less and less consideration for what true freedom of speech really means.

Additonally, I mocked Cosmopolitan magazine because its sex tips remain stupid. It is trying very hard at the moment to be the "acceptable" face of feminism. Sometimes it makes good points, sometimes I roll my eyes hard.

There were plenty of stupid things said about rape in 2012 and this has not really changed. As such, we had the unedifying spectacle of Ashley Judd being shot down in flames for daring to discuss rape. This led to idiots quoting her out of context and any intelligent discussion on rape fell by the wayside. I attempted commonsense on the thorny issue of false rape accusations but I am not sure anyone noticed.

April was a weird old month in the feminist rant department. I wasn't exactly tackling the big issues with a piece on marketing chocolate Special K to women (although I remain so tired of food being referred to as "naughty" or "wicked"...) and another piece on why shoe shopping sucks. But then Margaret Thatcher died and while the people who commented on my reflections on Thatcher as a feminist icon, I am quite sure many disagree with me wholeheartedly. Her legacy remains a topic of debate and I expect this to continue for decades.

And then there was another piece on lads' mags and Page 3 which resulted in some interesting comments indeed. I encountered a tiresome woman who used her "I'm a mother, you're not!" reasoning to try and shut down debate on censorship of lads' mags. That is a surefire way to quell any hope of intelligent discussion and it happens all the time. Nuts magazine announced more modest covers, possibly in the wake of the Lose The Lads' Mags campaign but I doubt campaigners will rest until these magazines are eliminated.

A century after Emily Davidson's untimely death elevated her to suffragette martyr status, I shared a few thoughts on things that would probably appall her in 2013. And looking over the points I made, not much has improved for women's voices in Parliamant. There is still tedious Daily Mail slut-shaming, and G4S still getting government contracts despite being inept and unscrupulous.

Nigella Lawson's personal life hit the headlines in 2013 after awful pictures of her now ex-husband throttling her at a London restaurant were published. She seems to have happily moved on. If only the same could be said for everyone who has suffered at the hands of an abusive partner. Domestic violence remains a problem.

I took a look at Australia, my country of birth after Julia Gillard stopped being the Prime Minister. I maintain that a lot of the vitriol directed at her was sexism pure and simple.

2013 also marked the year I could have been released from a UAE prison had I not acted my way out of a farcical adultery trial. It was a shocking and sad story but I do mot regret living in the UAE nor do I think it's the worst place on the planet for women. Indeed, a later rant on the niqab showed that my time in the Middle East led me to views on Islamic dress that may not be popular in certain circles. When it comes to how much flesh a woman should show, she simply cannot win.

Despite being a long-term Cosmo and Grazia magazine snarker, I defended writing about beauty because, basically, lipstick is not the enemy. Hell, some days I wear it myself. More seriously, there was a censorship row at Sydney University over a magazine cover featuring a range of vulvas. It would appear this is just one of many incidents in universities around the world where free speech is being stifled. This has become an alarming trend in recent years and it has to stop. Universities will no longer be bastions of free speech and thought if the rot is not stopped.

Sex workers' rights is always a tricky one. But I don't think anyone can deny that the current laws help anyone, especially women, whether they are brilliantly unrepentant sex workers by choice or whether they are true victims. In any case, a moral panic over women selling sex is never helpful.

And as the sun set on 2013's blogging, I reflected on the role of first ladies. Again, they can't win. It doesn't matter what political stripe they belong to, or what causes they choose to champion, they will be slagged off by someone. It is an awful job and I do wonder how much relief is felt by first ladies when their husbands are no longer in office. Whatever the case, it'd be good to see more bright women leading countries - not that this will be the outcome of the 2013 British General Election...

Photo by Vera Kratochvil

What is the point of a first lady?

Michelle Obama has been condemned for promoting healthy eating for kids, Laura Bush was criticised for not being enough of a feminist, Barbara Bush's weight was mocked, Nancy Reagan's lack of weight and astrologer habit was laughed at, Samantha Cameron and Michelle Obama's fashion choices are put under constant scrutiny, Hillary Clinton endured absurd scrutiny about the state of her marriage while Bill was in the White House, Justine Milliband can only be considered as a respectable potential Prime Minister's wife because she and Ed finally got legally married. And so on...

In short, first ladies everywhere are expected to be glamorous/kind-hearted/devoted to a worthy but not-too-political cause/supportive of their husbands even when their husbands are being dicks/faithful even when their husbands are not/well-groomed/never weirdly dressed/devoted mothers/assets to their husbands' campaigns.

It is ridiculous and it has got to stop. What if the wife of a president or prime minister decided to do nothing much? What if she decided not to bother with a pet cause? What if she just went about her business working for a living or being a stay-at-home mother or whatever she did to fill her days before her husband rose to power? What if she decided not to be a public figure? What if she didn't even turn up for cheesy photo opportunities on the campaign trail before he was elected?

These women are often high achievers in their own right but they are mostly famous because of who they married. The expectations put on these women is frequently ridiculous. People whine that they are "disappointed" with Michelle Obama as a first lady because she hasn't shaken things up enough. But if she did let loose with, say, a pro-choice campaign or whatever was stirring the bees in her bonnet, she'd still get slammed by others for being too political.

First ladies can't win.

Ugh. Even the term "first lady" implies an absurd ideal of femininity that few of us will ever reach.

But it is different for "first men". For starters, the term "first man" sounds ridiculous, like a made-up spot in a cricket team. We don't care what they wear. We don't expect them to support some fluffy charity. We don't see them on the covers of magazines. We seldom get their views on anything much.

The exception to the "first man" rule was Tim Mathieson, partner of former Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. He had the temerity to not be legally married to Gillard and to work for a living as a hairdresser. As such, he was accused of being gay (because in Australia, clearly, being gay is the worst thing ever and it is obviously impossible for a heterosexual man to cut and colour hair...). And even then, he wasn't expected to take on a charity or do anything much beyond being a law-abiding citizen.

But Mathieson's treatment was an extension of the mindless sexism that plagued Gillard's ill-starred term as PM. Gillard didn't fit the traditional mould of a married politician. This seemed to confound people, the kind of people whose tiny minds are no doubt blown by the concept of gay people getting married. Whoa!

Yet in Iceland, the former Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, was openly lesbian. Life went on without her getting slammed down with a load of stupid homophobia. It would appear Icelanders have mastered the art of minding their own business when it comes to the sex lives of their leaders.

If only we could all mind our own damn business in Icelandic style.

Meanwhile, Angela Merkel's husband is not really known outside of Germany. I can't name him without resorting to Google, I don't know what he looks like, I don't know what he wears, I don't know what his views are on anything, and frankly, I don't care. Why should I? Why should anyone?

Sure, there probably are women out there who aspire to be the wife of a president or a prime minister. Whatever. If they are that sad and shallow, it is probably for the best that they are not aspiring to be presidents or prime ministers themselves. Instead, those whose husbands do rise to great heights will be expected to be decorative, an "asset to her husband's campaign", and to be a public figure, only not one that is too controversial or supports anything too radical or unladylike. It also helps if she is a "fashion icon", has photogenic children who never burp or fart in public and she is into something suitably feminine like interior design.

But this is part of a bigger pile of bullshit. This is the pile of bullshit that deems that leaders should be married, that unmarried leaders are somehow defective, that men, especially married men, are better leaders, that gay leaders are still a bit weird and controversial, and that wives of leaders cannot simply do their own thing. And as long as we keep feeding the pile of bullshit with daft expectations on first ladies, we will not get any closer to being represented by politicians that actually represent all of us. We will miss out on some great people ever being elected to powerful positions and we will continue to be the poorer for it.

Australia, post-Gillard...

I have not lived in Australia for almost eight years. Hell, why do I even care what goes on politically back home? But I do. Aside from the fact I still pay tax in Australia, I have friends and family there and I don't want them to suffer any government idiocy, regardless of who is in power.

And then Julia Gillard was deposed. In favour of Kevin Rudd. The man Gillard deposed before narrowly winning an election. Whatever you think of Gillard, it took some serious guts to call a leadership spill knowing it would almost certainly mean the end of her time in office. After much Murdoch press-led speculation, the time came to cut the shit and end the nonsense.

So Gillard's gone, Rudd is the Prime Minister again, the dust has settled, will anything change?

Probably. Kind of.

I get why Gillard was binned. The polls indicated electoral catastrophe for her against Tony Abbott, the leader of the Liberal party (which is actually Australia's conservative party and Abbott is the king of saying stupid things that are far from liberal, but I digress...). Kevin Rudd was polling way better than Gillard and it looks like he has a chance of, if not winning the next election, then at least ensuring the Labor party's representation isn't reduced to a few people and a dog.

And speaking of dogs, a company called Paddington Pups have released a Julia Gillard chew toy. See the picture at the top of this post. It's ever so clever. For $33.70, a little piece of Aussie sexism and cognitive dissonance can be yours.

Sigh.

We can argue until we're blue in the face as to whether Gillard was a victim of sexism. I don't think it was the only factor in her downfall but it certainly played a role. Why was she so unpopular in the polls in comparison to Rudd?

Growing up in a very politically minded household, I have been observing Australian politics for close to three decades. I was encouraged to take an interest in politics from a very early age (although, aged four, my summation of former Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, as a "bum face" was possibly not my most nuanced moment).

In that time, I can safely say I have never seen the level of vitriol thrown at Gillard thrown at any other Prime Minister. And when I say vitriol, I mean personal attacks, stupid questions and irrelevant comments about everything from the size of her arse (yeah, well-played, Germaine Greer. Way to carry the torch for the sisterhood!) to her hair colour to her accent (Australian Prime Minister has Australian accent. SHOCK!) to the contents of her uterus or lack thereof. Endless rivers of venom spewed forth, most of which had precisely nothing to do with any policies.

The context of her famous misogyny rant at Tony Abbott was unfortunate (Google "Peter Slipper"...) but the content was spot-on. Abbott had no qualms about using the sexist hatred of Gillard for his own ends.

But it's OK, everyone. She has gone now. And in her wake are the usual "well, this will put off women running for office" comments. When Rudd was originally deposed, nobody said that'd put men off running for office. Nor did Paddington Pups launch a Kevin Rudd chew toy, complete with a stupid sales pitch that showed a lack of understanding about Australian politics.

Now we have Rudd back, and as a bonus, he has some some wishy-washy rhetoric on asylum seeker policy. Hell, when you can't be sexist, you can always try and pander to the racists, I guess. Although if Rudd was so offended by asylum seeker policy under Gillard and, especially while he was the Minister for Foreign Affairs, why didn't he speak out about it then? Or cross the floor with the carbon tax vote? Or do anything to dissent against Gillard on a policy level?

Congratulations, Australia. You can look forward to another Cyanide versus Arsenic election.