regrets. i've had a few.
Goddamn. It's 4am and I can't sleep yet again. I'm sitting here thinking about the Peter Qasim situation, and my rant from a couple of days ago.
Specifically, I'm thinking about what I said about the Zapatistas, and whether I truly believe that their nationalism is "dodgy." After reading this piece by Ashanti Alston, I decided that i was totally wrong on that point. I mean, it's working for them, right? They're talking about themselves as a nation within Mexico; a nation of indigenous people. If their situation is at all analogous to that of Aboriginals here in Australia, this kind of nationalism is crucial in the face of ongoing genocide. That black pride is doing more to combat onslaughts than any well-meaning rants. And, when I look at what the Zapatistas are doing, they're not being exclusive or arseholes about their identity. Fuck, Subcommandante Marcos isn't even indigenous.
When I think about it from that perspective, seeing hippies appropriate aboriginal culture is more understandable; they're trying to utilise that strength, that source of power. Kinda like drag queens and feminine power?
Some might say that "autonomy" is a more appropriate word than "nationalism". But, meh, it's kind of typical for white guys like me to look for appropriate synonmyms for what coloured people are doing. I humbly submit that I should probably cease to order the world by labelling social movements according to my point of view.
That's right. This blog is meant to be about the dole.
Okay, okay. In my dole news, I'm back on fortnightly forms with four employer's contact details after a blissful three months of monthly forms with no jobs to put on them.
On Wednesday, I'm intending to go to a 'Welfare to Work' information session being put on by the Federal Government. My plan is to write a piece for this blog and for Melbourne Indymedia.
The info session is about the "comprehensive package to move people from welfare to work" (that what the ad for the thing says). Now I went to the website as directed by the ad I saw in last Saturday's Age but no info about the info session was forthcoming.
Will there be nibbles? Is it a press thing? The ad says it goes from 10am to 2noon (sic). And fuck me, it's at the Sheraton Towers (now called the Langham Hotel). That is a swanky place, for those of you not from Melbourne. I plan to go all doled up; flanellete shirt, possibly drunk.
The gist of the Welfare to Work program is forcing cripples and single mothers to work under threat of loss of payment, with no corresponding funding to make employers flexible for mothers or modifying workplaces so the disabled can work there. With the change in the Senate, it looks like the Goverment has decided to replace the carrot and stick approach with the cattleprod. Oh, and they gave themselves a Au$65 a week payrise.
I've heard no mention of what is planned for the able bodied and childless, though it can't be good. I did see on the news that the much-despised Job Network (a privatised network of employment centres) will be losing Au$500,000,000 in funding. Insert a Nelson "ha ha" here. As mentioned in earlier blog entries, the Job Network funding is a thinly-veiled subsidy for conservative religious organisations. However, I suspect that it will be the more secular of these Job Network members that will be defunded.
Is anyone really reading this blog anymore?
Specifically, I'm thinking about what I said about the Zapatistas, and whether I truly believe that their nationalism is "dodgy." After reading this piece by Ashanti Alston, I decided that i was totally wrong on that point. I mean, it's working for them, right? They're talking about themselves as a nation within Mexico; a nation of indigenous people. If their situation is at all analogous to that of Aboriginals here in Australia, this kind of nationalism is crucial in the face of ongoing genocide. That black pride is doing more to combat onslaughts than any well-meaning rants. And, when I look at what the Zapatistas are doing, they're not being exclusive or arseholes about their identity. Fuck, Subcommandante Marcos isn't even indigenous.
When I think about it from that perspective, seeing hippies appropriate aboriginal culture is more understandable; they're trying to utilise that strength, that source of power. Kinda like drag queens and feminine power?
Some might say that "autonomy" is a more appropriate word than "nationalism". But, meh, it's kind of typical for white guys like me to look for appropriate synonmyms for what coloured people are doing. I humbly submit that I should probably cease to order the world by labelling social movements according to my point of view.
That's right. This blog is meant to be about the dole.
Okay, okay. In my dole news, I'm back on fortnightly forms with four employer's contact details after a blissful three months of monthly forms with no jobs to put on them.
 |
The excitement of life on the dole never stops. |
The info session is about the "comprehensive package to move people from welfare to work" (that what the ad for the thing says). Now I went to the website as directed by the ad I saw in last Saturday's Age but no info about the info session was forthcoming.
Will there be nibbles? Is it a press thing? The ad says it goes from 10am to 2noon (sic). And fuck me, it's at the Sheraton Towers (now called the Langham Hotel). That is a swanky place, for those of you not from Melbourne. I plan to go all doled up; flanellete shirt, possibly drunk.
The gist of the Welfare to Work program is forcing cripples and single mothers to work under threat of loss of payment, with no corresponding funding to make employers flexible for mothers or modifying workplaces so the disabled can work there. With the change in the Senate, it looks like the Goverment has decided to replace the carrot and stick approach with the cattleprod. Oh, and they gave themselves a Au$65 a week payrise.
I've heard no mention of what is planned for the able bodied and childless, though it can't be good. I did see on the news that the much-despised Job Network (a privatised network of employment centres) will be losing Au$500,000,000 in funding. Insert a Nelson "ha ha" here. As mentioned in earlier blog entries, the Job Network funding is a thinly-veiled subsidy for conservative religious organisations. However, I suspect that it will be the more secular of these Job Network members that will be defunded.
Is anyone really reading this blog anymore?
posted by Lumpen at 5/17/2005 04:17:00 am
6 Comments:
So how did the info sesh go? I once tried off-one's-dial gonzo journalism by crashing one of these things, only to be lost for words. At the elaborate futility of it – theirs, not mine.
Your Nelson-esque "ha ha" at the Job Network’s losing $500m in funding is a bit premature. All this lost funding represents their services (sic) to the unemployed; they are meanwhile gaining $1.5bn for new/extended services to the disabled and single parents. So, just like Liberace said, they’ll be crying all the way to the bank.
What is interesting about the re-prioritisation of Job Network funding is the implication – albeit a deafeningly silent one – that the JN’s “services” to the unemployed have been a measurable failure. Who would have thought? (Everyone in the world but the spivs themselves and the Labor opposition, it would seem.)
By the sound of it, you’ve just come off the joke program called “intensive assistance” – a mutually convenient way for you/me to get a bit of paperwork relief, and a Queensland property developer (or if not, a fundamentalist Christian lobby group) to get a few thou of taxpayer money for pretending to help get you a job. See:
http://paulwatson.blogspot.com/2004_06_13_paulwatson_archive.html#108744495596123851
Hence, a few years on, the government has finally clicked that there must be better ways of spending taxpayer money. Like henceforth giving it to the same Queensland property developers/ fundamentalist Christian lobby groups, but this time for their pretending to help the *disabled and single parents* get a job.
By my reckoning, this new game will be up around 2008, and it will then be someone else's turn, again. Can't wait to see old-age pensioners getting righteously churned through the JN.
Yep.
often
OCCASIONALLY. MORE OFTEN i just remembered it the other week
dr.woooo
yep
sigh, unfortunatly yes
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