Trigg Beach 2004 from yesterday.

Trigg Beach, same as yesterday but July 1975, 45 years earlier.  © PJ Croft 2020

Perth skyline June 1988. Not many tall buildings.  © PJ Croft 2020

Perth Station from Forrest Place 1976   ©  PJ Croft 2020

Palace Hotel before the Bond erection  1980   © PJ Croft 2020

Barque Endeavour July 1988   © PJ Croft 2020

Just a few of many hundreds of my photos which are getting a bit historic now. A bloke should publish a book, I suppose.

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It’s been suggested that I’m wasting my breath, getting upset for no purpose after my venting about Robodebt yesterday. OK, let me quote a few relevant phrases:

All that is required for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.  (Burke)

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.  (Niemöller)

The only wrong thing to say is to say nothing.   (Meghan Markle)

These were said in vastly different contexts but they still have application to this evil government’s depredations on the weakest members of society. The view of the Liberal Party is that the best way forward is for government to get out of the way of entrepreneurs and businessmen (and women) so that they will build businesses and the wealth generated will trickle down in the form of better wages.

The problem with this idea is that no matter how you fiddle the figures, the wealth does NOT trickle down. The money is staying at the top. CEO and senior executive salaries have skyrocketed but wages have stayed stagnant. The gap between rich and poor is growing faster than at any time in history. The multiple between shop floor wages and top executive salaries since the 1950s has grown from about 10:1 to 300:1 or more. It’s not just in other countries, it’s happening in this country too.

The other Liberal Party attitude is that if people are poor, it’s their own fault. They should just get a good job! That’s an actual quote of this party a few years ago (Joe Hockey, then treasurer, now ambassador to the USA). Just go out and get a good job, that’s all you need to do to get on.

The problem is, good jobs are becoming scarcer, automation is taking jobs, both skilled and unskilled, wages are at their lowest level of growth since the 1930s, wage theft by employers is now endemic, training opportunities and apprenticeships have been ruthlessly cut for a decade, TAFE has been gutted and university is now almost unaffordable.

So if you’re one of the thousands who can’t get training or experience and can’t get a job, you are forced onto welfare and a payment which is about 50% below the poverty line.

And that’s where the next nasty Liberal Party philosophy cuts in – if you’re on welfare, you’re probably going to cheat. So they devised this Robodebt scheme of looking at tax records, making assumptions without evidence, then sending letters without warning accusing people of cheating and demanding they repay a supposed debt. This is a debt that in most cases doesn’t exist. They, Centrelink, don’t have to prove it, you have to prove you don’t owe the money.

So the next step is the debt collectors. Documentation of a suicide due to Robodebt

One death is one too many and there were many more. That’s why I will speak out in my own small way. I’m not going to stay silent while evil flourishes.

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More quotes from an article in The Monthly today:  One robodebt victim, blogger Andie Fox, wrote about her own difficulties with Centrelink as well as a private debt collector, and had her personal Centrelink records “mistakenly” sent from Minister Alan Tudge’s office to a Fairfax journalist, who then wrote an article questioning the validity of Fox’s claims.

Debts were raised against the dead, the intellectually disabled and the homeless. All the way into 2019, in fact, the Morrison government was still contemplating an expansion of the robodebt dragnet. The whole grotesque scheme was always, quite obviously, an ideological exercise: an attempt to blame the structural problems of a capitalist economy upon the poor.

I can’t write any more today – I feel sick.

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Yes I can. Here’s an article from 2016:

Human Services Minister Alan Tudge told A Current Affair last week that people who owed debts to Centrelink could end up in jail, but the government’s new automated computer system chasing welfare debts makes a basic mistake that is leading people to believe they have been unfairly targeted.

“We’ll find you, we’ll track you down and you will have to repay those debts and you may end up in prison,” Tudge told the program. The government says it is chasing up $4 billion in welfare debts through a new automated system that matches people’s income declared to the Tax Office with their income declared to Centrelink over the same financial year.

Minister for Human Services. What’s human about that? Threats of prison! For debts! What’s next, transportation to the UK on prison ships?

My old beach – Trigg.   (Trigg Island is there – see that low rocky thing in centre distance?)  © PJ Croft 2020.  Oh, I had some great swims there with my dogs from 2000 to 2013. I miss it!

I boil with suppressed rage when I read about this evil Liberal-National coalition government’s unlawful (i.e. illegal) Robodebt scheme. For those who don’t know Australian politics, it was a scheme hatched about four or five years ago based on their belief that there was widespread fraud occurring by people on welfare, true or not.

The government touted it as cracking down on dishonesty about reporting income to the welfare agency Centrelink, and it was said to be raising nearly a billion dollars in wrongly received welfare payments.

They did this by looking at the declared income received by clients, then, even if this was intermittent income received from part time work, or income received for only part of a year due to losing a job, or part of a year due to falling ill, then assuming that this rate of income applied for a whole year. This was called “income averaging”.

If you were targeted, the first you would know about it was when you received a letter saying you had to repay Centrelink $X – which could be thousands or tens of thousands of dollars and usually was.

The people who received these demanding letters were the same people who depended on welfare for any number of reasons, especially sickness, mental illness, physical disabilities, family breakup and domestic violence and so on. The common thread is that they are, almost by definition, on the bones of their arse, with no savings, dependent on those welfare payments. Can you imagine the shock at opening that envelope telling you you owe thousands or tens of thousands of dollars? Especially as it contained implied threats that legal action would be taken, and not just that, the department would be garnisheeing your bank account or your tax refund to retrieve this money. And they did it!

The result was that several people, at the very least, were driven to suicide. Probably more.

“Pursuing robodebt was the signature policy of Taskforce Integrity. The name says it all: a taskforce created to deal with those who lack integrity. Stuart Robert launched the initiative with this claim: “You are not just cheating and stealing from the government; you are stealing from your neighbour; you are stealing from those genuinely in need.” This is the same guy who is notorious for trying to make dodgy claims himself! Who eventually repaid $38,000 in taxpayer money for “residential internet costs.” ” (The Guardian 4/6/20) If it was all above board, why did he repay it?

Yes, the Honourable Stuart Robert MHR, Minister of the Crown for Social Security. The same guy who:

• used a taxpayer funded trip to China to transact business for a company he was involved in;
• while he was assistant treasurer, joined a company whose founder-director had a rape conviction;
• drew intense criticism for an exorbitant internet bill, which he charged to taxpayers at a rate of $2,000 per month. Robert blamed “connectivity issues” at his home and has since paid back the money. He repaid more than $35,000;
• he quit the front bench in 2016, after an internal investigation found he had shares in a trust linked to the mining company of a Liberal donor;

These are just a few of the reports and allegations of dodgy dealings by this guy. Just Google “Stuart Robert wrongdoing”. Yet he was put in charge of persecuting low income, sick or disabled people on welfare.

“The messaging in official statements, echoed by staff in Centrelink offices and call centres, encourages clients to feel worthlessness, anger, embarrassment and humiliation. All of this for $282.85 a week (pre-Covid-19), while the national poverty line was $457 per week. Anyone receiving support already knew that the Department of Human Services wanted them to feel bad about it, and robodebt doubled down on the notion that we were guilty in fiscal terms as well.” (The Guardian 4/6/20)

It’s not going too far to say that the government, through Centrelink, was “putting the frighteners” on vulnerable people.

As if this were not enough, trying to contact Centrelink was a world of pain. If you tried to phone it was almost impossible to talk to anyone. You were either on hold for two hours or more, or you were passed from person to person, answering difficult questions requiring access to documents.

The effect was that Centrelink didn’t have to prove you owed a debt, you had to prove that you didn’t owe anything!

Now a class action in the courts has finally found that this method of income averaging was unlawful. The distinction between unlawful and illegal is a bit arcane but unlawful means against civil law but not amounting to criminality. Huh.

So the government has to repay around $710m to tens of thousands of welfare recipients who were effectively frightened into repaying this money. But they will not apologise, saying that because it’s before the courts, they can’t.

Who was the instigator of this savage, cruel scheme? None other than our Bible thumping Christian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who likes to think of himself as a man of the people. His henchman was the current attorney general Christian Porter, my local member. He’s a member of the hard right of the Liberal Party, an acolyte of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), a hard right wing group who believe the ABC should be privatised, who advocate a flat tax of 30% on everyone, no matter what your income and other rabidly crazy ideas.

Perhaps you sense my disgust!

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“Australians lead the world in panic buying in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, according to new research that has analysed Google searches, including those for toilet paper and supermarket opening hours.”

Yeah, well, we Aussies are the best in the world at a lot o’ things, so being world’s best at panic buying fits, doesn’t it?

In fact, I hear we’re sending a team of panic buyers to the Olympics next year. It will include competitors in the “Most rolls of dunny paper in a trolley event”. Gold, for sure.

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I’ve done a long drive on the Mitchell Freeway today, from here to Osborne Park and back, about 50Km all up. Thank goodness the roadworks are finished around Karrinyup Rd, Hutton St and on into the city. I was so sick of negotiating cones and temporary lanes for a year or more.

Has the standard of driving improved after all the talk about how this virus has led to a “reset”. Maybe a bit, but I was still being tailgated and the hoons in their black Commodore utes were still weaving between lanes, trying to gain a few cars’ advantage. Grrrr.

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I took the opportunity to do a car wash and boy, the MX6 comes up well. The paintwork is in very good condition. I’ll do a good polish and it should be ready to advertise to sell. It’s a nice car but I’ve had my fun. I’m too fat for it.

Same with the Honda – I don’t need it, it’s too big. It’s for sale.

He who hesitates… I said this car was a good buy and someone else thought that too, because it’s been sold. Damn. That was a very fast sale because these cars are slow sellers. I’ve seen one stay on sale for two years and as far as I know it still hasn’t sold. There must be some problem with it. Oh well, it would have been a stretch too far for me, I think.

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Phew, if this is winter, let it continue. A beautiful warm 25deg day and the next week is forecast as an almost unbroken string of 22-23deg days and sunshine. I’m sure winter will arrive, but it’s not here yet.

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I’ve been saved from another, perhaps silly, purchase today. Aldi advertised an 8″ throat bandsaw for $129. This is a relatively small machine but ideal for model work. I wanted it, but knew I don’t really need it. Consequently I delayed going to Aldi today until about 3pm and by then their stock had been sold. Oh well, again it wasn’t to be and I’ve been saved.

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The gullible British public voted to leave the EU four years ago, then a few months ago they voted for that liar and con man Boris Johnson (actually only 43.5% voted for the Tories, 56% didn’t want the Conservatives. Yet such is the stupidity of first past the post voting).

Well, you stupid Poms, you bear the cost of more than 52,000 COVID-19 deaths to date. If you voted Tory, you are responsible for this grossly excessive death toll. The UK is one of the worst affected countries in the world, and why? There’s no special reason. How is it that Germany, with a far greater population and borders with several countries has a far lower death toll?

The reason is very poor leadership by Boris and his Tory henchmen. Poor decision making, mistakes, failure to test and trace, and they aren’t even counting all the deaths in their aged care homes!

If you voted Tory in the UK, you carry a share of the blame for this horrific death toll in Britain. Fools.

Bangkok 1988   © PJ Croft 2020

Wow, the days are adding up. Day77! I must admit things are getting a bit boring. There’s no lack of things to do, it’s just getting moving is the hard bit.

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Ever since I bought my LG 55″ OLED TV around 2017 (?), my old Sony 32″ LCD has sat forlornly on a table in a spare bedroom while I tried to decide what to do with it. It was basically worthless. Even though it was a Full HD Sony Bravia, no-one wanted it when I  tried to give it away. Only 32″? Nah. I thought I might bring it into this computer room, but that would have required drilling lots of holes in the wall for the mounting arm and I don’t really want to.

Anyway, browsing Facebook Marketplace on Wednesday night a woman was asking if anyone could donate a TV as she is out of work, has three kids and is kinda house-bound. Bingo. So I replied and she came here on Thursday morning to collect it. She was very grateful and I was happy to see it go to a good cause, so all’s well. Now I have some space again.

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If you could see my place, it’s like a workshop inside. I went a bit overboard in my orders from the Chinese website Wish and I’ve got hundreds of electronic components, connectors, small power supplies, small voltage regulators and controllers and so on. The idea was (and still is) that these would be for my model railway, when I build it.

But the space I had for the railway base boards is now taken up by the boxes of parts!

I’m stuck on the model railway. I’ve got a design worked out but I’m short of the electronics to drive the locos. I’m finding that DCC (Digital Command Control) is a bloody sight harder than it looks. In the old days, building up a couple of analogue controllers was not hard – I did it back in the ’80s.

But DCC, although it’s a brilliant idea, is fiendishly complicated. Cabs, throttles, boosters, decoders, data connections, computer interfaces, weird terminology, it’s not easy. It’s not too bad if you’ve got plenty of money and can buy a ready made system, but you’re looking at ~$1,000. That’s on top of the $1,000 I’ve already spent (over six years) on the track, points, a few locos and a dozen carriages and wagons.

Whether I’ll do this, clear the decks, spend quite a bit more money and make a start on what’s really a multi-year project is questionable.

I’ve actually built the PC boards for two boosters from a Silicon Chip design but they have to be put into a housing and provided with power yet.

In January this year, they published a new design for a controller and booster in one, and I was really looking forward to building it. But disappointment! It’s Arduino based, which I know nothing about, and in the description they say “…. we assume you are familiar with the Arduino Design Environment.” Er, no. Not at all! Fair go.

I’ve read the article several times and I can’t work out how to start. There’s no housing, no knobs, they just say you control it from your computer. Huh? There’s no detail. There’s no kit of parts available – I’ve checked with Jaycar and they’re no help, they don’t even seem to know about it. Phhhtt.

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The chaos in the USA at the moment, and the awful, terrible lack of leadership of the Dump is hard to watch. As the commentary says, this is not an isolated incident, this is the result of hundreds of years of ingrained racism, white supremacism, coming back to bite them.

What gets me is the savagery of the police. They are out of control, and since they are being supplied with surplus deadly weapons from the military, they feel they have the right to use them. Considering the number of people who own firearms in the US, more weapons than there are people, the potential is there for a civil war.

I’ve had the view for some time that nothing will change there without a revolution and it’s looking more and more possible.

And when even the president is taking the white supremacist side and suggesting that the armed forces could be released on the civilian population, it’s not looking hopeful. Just like the Soviet Union, the USA could well collapse from within.

And all this is happening in the middle of a pandemic! It’s quite unsettling. Quite honestly, I hope Donald Trump catches the Corona virus and dies. He does not deserve his place on this Earth.