Hoo boy, I am not feeling so great. So weak I can hardly lift myself out of my chair. I’m wondering if this is the chronic lymphocytic leukemia. I’ve made an appointment with the GP for a referral to the haematologist.

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Meanwhile, I’ve got a young guy coming tomorrow to do a string of jobs for me, around 17 of them that I’ve been delaying for far too long. He seems to be a hard worker, saying he thinks he can knock them all off in a day. Nothing difficult, just things that are increasingly difficult for me.

Jeez, he’s a good looking guy. He’s basically English with Scottish and German ancestry. That explains it. He’s 23 years old. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow.

PS: it’s Saturday now and he was here yesterday to do the work. He brought two younger people with him to help, siblings I would guess. He did introduce them but I didn’t catch the names.

One of the jobs was to swap over a radio in the Honda, from an AM/FM standard Pioneer to an almost identical unit with DAB+. It involved sticking an antenna to the inside of the windscreen and running the cable down to the radio – behind the dash.

But I neglected to supervise him and he put the antenna on the driver’s side – not where I wanted it. And he didn’t run the cable behind the dash as I wanted. I’ll have to pull it out and do it again. Serves me right!

But more worrying is that it doesn’t work – no stations. I wonder if it’s even plugged into the back of the radio? As I said, I’ll have to pull it out and look, which means I could have done it myself in the first place. Duh!

I also got him to look at my water feature- a long trough next to my patio which is supposed to be full of water and has a waterfall on it. It’s been leaking ever since I’ve been in the house, so much that I don’t bother to fill it. The young guy reckons it’s a leaking plastic pipe in there. Huh? He said he can’t fix it. I suspect he doesn’t know how, but too bad. It can wait.

At least I’ve had a start made in revamping my hi-fi setup, with the speaker and HDMI cables run. I hope I can get it going soon. I’m looking forward to it.

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A few weeks ago I posted on Facebook that I recognise Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas, and to take reasonable revenge for the evil attack on 7 October.

But they are going too far! This is not revenge, this is horrible vengeance. This is a new Holocaust being visited on the civilian population of Gaza. This unreasonable, indiscriminate killing of women and children, along with bombing of hospitals, ambulances, schools, refugee camps, food and medicine convoys, anything that moves in Gaza. This is, if not genocide, the nearest thing to it. They have killed 25,000 Gazan Palestinians, most of them civilians. Israel, you are war criminals!

Israel, STOP THIS!! You are as bad as the Nazis who wreaked revenge on innocent civilians during WW2. Stop!!!

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I’m not embarrassed to say that even though I’m an avowed left wing voter and proud member of the Labor Party, I listen every chance I get to two radio programs: Between the Lines, hosted by Tom Switzer, and Counterpoint, hosted by Amanda Vanstone, on RN (Radio National).

Tom Switzer is well known to be of the conservative right, and Amanda Vanstone is a former minister in a Liberal government and was the Australian ambassador to the Vatican, appointed by Tony Abbott, I think. But definitely with right wing views.

These programs are on the ABC and are meant to balance any left wing leanings by ABC journalists and staffers. But regardless of that, I listen avidly and find their interviews to be full of interest. They manage to interview leading figures in both US and UK establishmentds, universities and think tanks, as well as leading Australian intellectuals. I say openly, I listen closely and agree with much, if not most of what’s said. There’s not much difference between right and left in Australian politics I feel. Except when they talk about labour relations and unions. There, I draw a line, as you know.

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One of the topics today was the legacy of Britain, whether it did wrong things in “invading” many countries to make what was the British Empire, and the legacy of colonialism. It can easily be said that the British were arrogant, brutal and savage in the way they took over many territories, Australia in particular. They assumed ownership of all the land which was rightfully owned by the indigenous people, driving them away and actually killing, murdering tens of thousands of Aborigines.

By the way, Aborigine is made up of two words, Ab which is a linguistic term for extra or definite (e.g. ab-normal), and origin, which speaks for itself as original inhabitants.

There is no question that the indigenous people of Australia, the Aborigines, were treated abominably, cruelly, harshly, brutally and are still being treated so to this day! There have been more than 400 Aboriginal deaths in custody, deaths in jail cells at police hands, and not one prosecution has resulted. This is an outrage. Yet nothing is done. The deaths continue. I’m not talking about the past; I’m talking about as recently as last week.

We’re celebrating Australia Day in a week, on the 26th, and I’m not saying we should do away with it or move it to another date, but what I do say is that we should think closely on what it means to the indigenous people and bear witness, keep kindness in our hearts for them. This is their land!

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That leads me to another topic that I think about often, the quality of the colonising people.

I think most people woud agree, that Americans are exceptional people. They are so talented in so many fields that it’s no wonder to me that they are world leaders. Rightfully so in my opinion.

Why is it so? Because from the very beginning, the Plymouth colonisers, who were a group of British people with high ideals who were incredibly courageous in the 15th century to set out across unknown seas to establish a new colony, based on high moral standards. Note: I do not deny that this is similar to invasion, that they assumed ownership of land from the American original inhabitants, the so-called Indians. I know that battles with the indigenes resulted. However, the quality of the Plymouth settlers was exceptionally high in morals and ethics.

They were followed by British people attracted by the similarity to England (hence New Hamphire, Boston, New York and all those “olde English” names which engendered a spirit of ‘home” in the early settlers.

But just as importantly, the early British settlers were followed by Dutch, French, German and Scandinavian people, people of high ideals. People who just wanted to establish a new life for themselves. Not convicts. Not soldiers. People of high morals and above average intellects. Hence Harvard, hence Princeton Universities and so on.

This contrasts with Australia. Our early settlers were convicts and soldiers, not noted for high morals or intellects. I’m afraid this is reflected in our population today. The average IQ is not very high and although there are many fine people here of high morals, we are dragged down by the hoi polloi, the racists, the dumb idiots. As shown by the result of the Voice referendum. So many people were too dumb to understand what “If you don’t know, vote No” meant. I am extremely disappointed in a couple of people I know. I thought better of them.