The Blog of Despair

I know I said I’d keep away from commenting the US political system – and I will. But this is not strictly about politics, although it has implications for politicians of any persuasion.

It happens every time there is a shooting outrage. Everyone leaps up and down and nothing changes.

Yet every time, without fail, the National Rifle Association (NRA) spells out the problem with total accuracy. They state it so clearly and simply that a child could understand it:

‘The only counter to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun’

For a thinking person that ought to say everything that needs to be said. But for anyone who needs a little help I will add the following:

When the NRA says ‘A good guy with a gun’ they don’t just mean a well-intentioned guy. True, he must be well-intentioned. But he must also be ‘A guy who is good with a gun’. Otherwise he is unlikely to be able to take control of the situation.

And he can’t just be good at shooting at targets. It is a well documented fact that very many military personnel, even in time of war, are reluctant to shoot at people.

There are rules for handling and using guns. Good guys know and obey them. As soon as I was big enough to hold a gun I was taught the following:

‘Don’t have the gun loaded unless and until you intend to use it.’

‘Always have the gun on ‘safe’ – or ‘broken’ if it’s a shotgun – until you intend to fire it.’

‘Never point a gun at anyone unless you intend – or are prepared – to shoot them.’

And in the military I was taught:

‘Aim for the middle of the target, so as to have the best chance of hitting the right person. Handguns in particular are notoriously inaccurate except at point-blank range and are an absolute liability in the hands of an untrained person.’

Let us suppose that our good guy is well-trained and an accurate shot. He has practised with moving targets, among obstructions and in bad light. He is brave, willing to risk his own life, and prepared to take the life of another person.

It’s a big ask. But let’s say we have such a guy.

Now consider the bad guy. It seems that in most cases he is armed with an automatic, or at least semi automatic weapon. He’s there to kill people and doesn’t usually care too much about which people he kills. And he is ALWAYS in position before the good guy is alerted. Nobody knows about the attack until the killing starts.

Now our good guy needs to know that it’s happening and he needs to get there. But let’s assume the best case – he’s right next door and hears the first shots. He has a loaded weapon on him. What does he do now?

He can rush into the room, or across the square if it’s happening in a public open space. Then what?

Does he challenge the gunman? The gunman has of course ducked down behind the passers-by or the schoolchildren, from where he can spray a wide area with his automatic weapon. And he won’t worry if he hits a few random people in the process.

OK, so does our good guy try to shoot first, regardless of whom he may hit by accident? That’s a much bigger ask. And he still doesn’t have a good target. But if he hesitates, he’s dead.

I’ve said enough – you can add more thoughts for yourself. The point is:

The NRA is absolutely right. The only counter to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

And the chances of a good guy being available, suitably armed, adequately trained and experienced, mentally tough enough, and lucky enough to get off a telling shot before the bad guy kills him, and without killing any innocent bystanders, are….

(Please insert your own estimate of the odds.)

The reality is it just won’t work, and even if it did there would likely be a lot of innocent blood shed.

So, since the only counter to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, obviously the only effective way to deal with the bad guy is to PREVENT HIM FROM GETTING A GUN IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Of course you can’t always do that. And sometimes there WILL be a good guy. And sometimes the good guy will win – maybe. But it you make it very, very difficult for bad guys to get guns, particularly automatic weapons and military grade ammunition that can pierce walls (and multiple bodies) a lot less people will die.

Just a final thought:

Are there really so many sales of guns to bad guys that those NRA members who are arms manufacturers fear the loss of business if bad guys are prevented from owning firearms?

Jumping from the general to the specific; while I was taking a short break from developing my comments on democracy I came across a week-old newspaper that had lodged, undiscovered, under some decking at the front of the property. And the front page of this paper held a story germane to my comments in an earlier blog and also to something that I had been thinking about earlier this evening.

The burden of the story was Malcolm Turnbull’s complete abandonment of, and outright attack on, Barnaby Joyce.  I was of course aware that the unfortunate Barnaby had been driven from his positions as Leader of his party and Deputy Prime Minister but I had assumed that these were due to pressure from within the National Party. Not entirely so, it seems.

Now the important point here is that only a short time ago Malcolm Turnbull was publicly joining in the celebration of Barnaby’s re-election and swearing eternal brotherhood (another typo – I wrote ‘botherhood’, which may be prescient) or something similar. Ol’ Malcolm was even wearing  ‘country’ clothing, matching that worn by Barnaby, and beaming sweatily into the TV cameras with his arm across Barnaby’s shoulders.

And he had reason to be damn grateful because Barnaby – or rather Barnaby’s electors, had just saved his parliamentary majority of one. It would serve him right if Barnaby now resigned and his seat fell to the Labor party.

Now my earlier thoughts had been about the curious custom of occasionally allowing a ‘conscience vote’ in Parliament. Since this is a rare phenomenon it follows that the political parties demand that their members otherwise vote in accordance with the party directives, regardless of the demands of their consciences.

But a conscience, it seems to me, is something that tries to dissuade one from doing what one knows is a harmful thing. And it therefore appears that, in a significant number of cases,  the political parties consider themselves unable convince all of their sitting members that their intentions, enshrined in the bill to be voted upon, are not harmful. Else there would never be a need for a special ‘conscience vote’ at all.

So these people are routinely supporting legislation that they know or suspect will harm those whose interests they claim to represent. Otherwise  there would be rare no-conscience votes. Only then would they be expected to disregard the dictates of their consciences.

And surely this is all of a piece with swearing that someone is a wonderful fellow when he’s just saved your government and stabbing him in the back as soon as there is an opportunity to do so. The name of the game is expediency. By its very construction our political system leaves no room for concepts such as morality, ethics or conscience.

This is a timely example of the rot inherent in our political system and I will refer to it when I resume my thesis.

If you look at Wikipedia you will find a lot of stuff about the definition of Democracy. What I have always understood to be its roots, and what I suggest in essence it ought to be, are:

Responsible and capable citizens devoting their time and abilities to the conduct of national affairs for a single, fixed, period of time. Then returning to their lives as private citizens.

I have my own ideas on how and by whom they should be chosen, and on how their powers should be curbed and controlled by the electorate to prevent abuse, but basically those are the sort of people who are competent to do the job. And that rules me out.

If you want be a Plumber or an Electrician or a Builder or a Doctor or a Car Mechanic or even – God forbid – a ‘Financial Advisor’,  you are expected, and indeed obliged, to achieve and demonstrate specific levels of technical knowledge, ability, qualification and, in most cases, compliance with regulatory requirements.

Whether or not we agree with the creeping (and accelerating) development of the ‘Nanny State’ will be dealt with in other blogs.  The requirements exist and, where they appear to be within reason, nobody with any sense questions their necessity – or at least their desirability.

What do you need to become a politician?

There certainly are studies bearing on political development and, to be fair, many of our politicians are well educated in politics and history. And many aren’t.

There are other useful types of knowledge and training, in business methods and communication for example, that can help the representative to do his or her job well, especially those who aspire to ministerial office.

I won’t try to give a complete list of useful or even desirable basic requirements here; my point is simply that none are mandated. No ‘Certificate 4 in Representing the Public Interest’ exists, as far as I know.

The single, essential, qualification is the ability to get elected. I will return to that later.

What we do have is far too many lawyers. The place is crawling with them. As undesirable and difficult to get rid of as bedbugs. Quite  few years ago I was curious to know how many of these we had in South Australia – out of a total population of about one million people. So I looked in the phone book and there were 47 pages of them. I didn’t bother to count the number per page – a ludicrously excessive number seemed close enough. I don’t really want to know how many there are now. But their inclusion in our government is a poisonous and totally undesirable element.

And governments. Although we have a national population a little less than that of, for example, Tokyo, we are apparently so unruly that it takes nine governments – 6 State, 2 Territory, 1 Federal – to Rule us. Note my words; not to serve, not even to control, but to Rule us. And I made a typo there and first wrote ‘Rile us’; that too!

It made sort sort of sense, in this huge country, when travel was slow and the population far smaller than now, to localise much of government. Now it simply duplicates tasks that there are far too few competent people to perform. Brisbane City Council does a terrific job over an enormous area;  I was not entirely joking when I have often suggested that we should ask them to take over the whole task of governing (sorry, Ruling) the country.

Now this is an early blog on the subject and, although I have been developing these thoughts over many years, both during the early part of my adult life in the UK and a somewhat longer time here in Australia, I have not previously tried to commit them to the written word, in some sort of structured manner. So do not be surprised if it does not read smoothly and seamlessly.

And here I will leave the development of my thesis to deal with a relevant development in current political activity that I think should have a blog to itself.

Oh Well! While I am mysteriously unable to preview and correct the previous blog I may as well press on I suppose.

I will only comment on the politics of other nations under extreme provocation. The furore over Donald trump has led me to do so but I will try hard to refrain from further such comment in the future.

Moving our focus to Australia, where I have every right and considerable cause to comment, I will start with the recent citizenship fiasco.

For the benefit of anyone fortunate enough to be unaware of this particular pantomime, the facts are as follows:

The Australian Constitution (which, like everyone else’s Constitution, is only invoked when somebody sees a way to gain a personal advantage from doing so) requires that persons standing for election shall have solely Australian  Citizenship.

This seems a simple and reasonable rule. A member of Parliament should not have divided loyalties.

And here we see the customary stupidity of the legal draughtsman at work.

In reality, what possible influence can this requirement have on the actions and beliefs  – the loyalties — of the person concerned?

In this context I will mention three names from recent history. Burgess, McLean, and Philby. Old Poms (Australian migrants from the UK) like me, will know where I am going with this. For the benefit of others I will explain.

Those men attended the ‘best’ Public Schools and Universities in England and went on to have hugely successful careers in British Intelligence, rising to the very top positions. They did not have, and had never had,  multiple citizenships. They were shining examples of the ‘Old School Tie brigade’. British to the core and utterly trustworthy.

They were also major Russian spies and did enormous harm; much of which is still undermining our safety and freedom today. They were recruited to the Communist party whilst at university and became ‘sleepers’. Many young and idealistic people were attracted to the idea of communism in those days; most soon saw its obvious flaws and flinched away from any association with it. And these three pretended, with total success, to have done the same.

Even when discovered they were able, no doubt with covert assistance by the ‘Old Boy’ network, to escape to Russia. Burgess and McLean were discovered first but managed to flee just in time. Of course they did.  Philby was their boss and the information would have reached him before any action could be taken.

Then the rumours started and the press had a field day speculating on the identity if ‘The Third Man’ and revelling in the allusion to the popular film of that name. But Philby also ran successfully. Of course he did; he knew every move being made in advance. He was ‘M’ – the top man.

In case anyone has not grasped my point, they could not have behaved less loyally and more harmfully had they had a dozen multiple citizenships.

(And as an aside, don’t think it couldn’t happen here. Do you think it was simply accident or oversight that allowed Christopher Skase to simply ask for his confiscated passport back and be given it?  You can bet he would hardly have bothered to ask unless he knew that there was a fix in place. Old Pals? Money’? A combination of the two? Just something else that has been  quietly hushed up and slid under the carpet. How much more goes on that we never hear about?)

So, poor old Barnaby Joyce, born in Australia, lived all his life here, utterly devoted to the welfare of his constituents and to country people in general, was found to be entitled to New Zealand citizenship. He’d never suspected it. Never even thought of it. He had no wish to be anything but an Australian, had never supposed that he was anything else and had not the slightest reason to suppose it. And nobody but a lawyer or a politician (too often the same thing) with an eye on the main chance would have ever thought anything about it either.

But someone crawled out from under their rock bent on causing harm. Nobody first asked the view of the people who had elected Barnaby. The full might of the Supreme Court was brought to bear on the subject and several people were discovered to have entitlement to obscure citizenships to defunct nations and other unlikely and unanticipated rights. And a few had just been sloppy and not done the due diligence required of them. Those few, surely, could have been peremptorily dealt with and the rest allowed a short grace period to formally renounce and reject all other citizenships. Indeed it would make more sense, and perhaps even be effective, if candidates were simply required to make a formal, legally recognised declaration to that effect in the first place. And the Supreme Court could confine itself to something useful – surely it has more than enough serious matters to consider.

And none of it benefited the Australian public in any way; because probably none of those people were planning to betray the country, and if any of them were they could have done so as easily as Burgess, McLean and Philby, regardless of how few or many citizenships they had or were entitled to. Does anyone believe that renouncing a bizarre and unlikely citizenship would in any way affect the desires and motives of the person – except possibly to fuel, or even initiate, their desire to harm the country?

But Barnaby Joyce took the necessary steps to revoke his unsuspected citizenship (now we need no longer fear the evil designs of the New Zealanders!) and placed himself before his electorate once again. And, predictably, was re-elected with a comfortable majority. But the knife-in-the-back specialists had not done yet.

Now we see Barnaby Joyce’s career and personal life invaded and wrecked over a personal matter that has no bearing at all on his ability to represent the people who elected him. But at least that has allowed Tony Abbott to make the first sensible remark that I have heard attributed to him in a long time. He said ‘It’s nobody else’s business.’ And he is right.

Of course all this crap is a product of our silly political system and the hordes of lawyers infesting it. The whole aim of the exercise is simply for the Labor party to gain an advantage that the electorate had not chosen to afford them.  Misusing the label ‘Democracy’ has given our political system a legitimacy that it does not deserve; something that I will enlarge on in the next blog.

For now, ponder the fact that Donald Trump is an excellent example of a true Democrat – and I am not referring to any political party of that name. Malcolm Turnbull is another example and I much regret that the detestable Paul Keating has a valid claim to be another. That ought to give you a good clue to my thinking.

Don’t miss the next thrilling instalment.

Are you all sitting comfortably? Good; then I will begin.

Once upon a time I started to move my domain name and email service. And lo! many things went wrong and many trained and experienced support people seemed unable to understand why. But we all persisted, despite my repeated failures to open sites and receiving messages to say that Security Certificates were invalid.

Then the good people succeeded, despite my bumbling efforts. And we have email.  And it is good.

And now my wife’s laptop refuses to open any site, receiving messages to say that Security Certificates are invalid.

But she too persists and, via her tablet, which seems so far to be unaffected, she has accessed the Internet and discovered that people have been having this problem for years.

So why did none of the good trained and experienced support people know this? Or, if they did know, why didn’t they tell me?

The sickness seems to have run its course on my PC

Ah! An announcement. The laptop is fixed; a problem with Kaspersky (don’t ask) due to microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, performing an uninvited update.

That’s quite enough valuable blog time wasted on that. Time to return to abusing politicians and all that they stand for…

Before my success in getting yesterday’s ignored blog published today I ventured into Domainland again, to try and enter the settings for my new email service. Once again, no success. No surprise.

I have received no email from the service provider either; maybe they are now in as much despair as I am. Word Press support have kindly offered to do the setup for me and I would ask them to, but I fear the chaos that will ensue if they and my service provider both try to do so at the same time – or even sequentially.

And now several more wasted hours have passed and the demands of real life are pressing.  Perhaps I will return to Blogland  this evening,but now I must depart.

Another day, another drama. At least now I have learned to save my blog content so that I can try again when WordPress declines to publish it. Let me try to add yesterdays declined effort now:

I recall once reading the words:

‘I was sad and lonely and a small voice whispered to me “Cheer up, things could be worse.” So I did. And they were,’

Now, despite all indications to the contrary, I begin to feel that the present drama is coming to a conclusion. Especially as, after several hours of sporadically trying, I have managed to access this site once again.

I am sure that if there were awards for misreading or misunderstanding simple instructions my walls would be covered in them. I willingly acknowledge this. But being repeatedly unable to get in and try again before I have forgotten what I did wrong last time does rather add to my difficulties.

And, having said that, I will return once more to the domains page – if it doesn’t fail again – and see if it presents me with something more constructive than the grey blurs that it showed just now. Unless of course Firefox (which I am using now because Ubuntu browser that worked before has begun producing the same failure) decides not to open it again.

Ah! Now I can’t get a preview,just a blank page. Let’s try Publish and Be Damned.

That isn’t working either. Better save this on my PC and try again later.

And now I am making progress, in a negative kind of way. Copy out these writings and hang them in your children’s bedrooms as an awful warning never to trust anyone to do anything straightforward on the Internet.

To recap: The object of this exercise is to obtain our email service from somewhere that we can afford.

Note that. There is nothing else that we require. NOTHING!

The difficulty – apart from the inexplicable behaviour of normally reliable and trouble-free browsers when confronted by WordPress and Zoho – is finding simple, basic information.

I thought that I had, after interminable searching, discovered that Zoho only allowed two pop accounts on its free ‘service’. I don’t know where I read that and I’m absolutely sure that if I live to be 100 years old I’ll never find it again. What I did stumble across next was that Zoho allows NO pop or IMAP accounts. In other words there is NO free email service, only a rather cumbersome webmail service.

So I have wasted several days trolling through a mass of ‘information’ and ‘help’, none of which was informational or helpful. In fact all of which served to obscure the only information that was of use to me.

Now I must gird up my loins and venture into the word jungle again to see if I can find an affordable solution. This has so far been like asking for a domestic electricity supply and being told that the only option is to buy a complete nuclear power station.

(I helped to build one of those a long time ago – it was much easier than this.)

I’m glad I saved this.

I didn’t even want this blog; I have a perfectly good one elsewhere that nobody reads. However, since I have acquired it I might as well write it’s history so far, as everything else that I have tried to do since unwisely moving my domain name to WordPress has been a complete failure.

Maybe I will feel better after doing that – but I doubt it.

This all started because Go Daddy decided to raise their email charges by several orders of magnitude.  We don’t want much; just a domain name so that we don’t have to change our email addresses whenever our ISP gets taken over and degenerates into crap, as the one that gave us perfect service for 10 years did. We don’t have a business so we don’t need 99% of what is on WordPress.

Now I realise that we could have left our domain name with Go Daddy – which didn’t cost much – and just had our email accounts with someone else. And if I had realised that WordPress didn’t provide email services itself I might have done just that – but I only had Go Daddy as an example and I supposed that all domain hosts would have similar services. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!

So now it has taken me a week of struggle to transfer the domain name – and pay four times as much for it – only to discover that the ‘free’ service by Zoho can’t be downloaded to my email client and their cheapest alternative that can be downloaded costs even more than Go Daddy’s email service.

That’s a solid week with no email, working all day and half the night to achieve exactly nothing. Score so far: Go Daddy 100%, WordPress zilch, Zoho nada. If my sanity remains unimpaired by this it will be a miracle.

I’d like to think that my next blog will be a happier one but It’s hard to imagine how that could be.

I don’t seem to have mentioned that my browser kept rejecting WordPress sites. I actually tried 8 browsers on 4 operating systems before I could get back in and start trying to clean up the mess. But the 9th browser seems to be working so far.

When I have got used to the peculiarities of this new provider – and I have no doubt that they will be just as peculiar as those of previous ones, such as putting an immovable  black message pane over this text so that I can’t see what I am misspelling – I will continue my random comments on politics, the world, and anything that attracts my tiny mind. You don’t have to read it and I have no sympathy for you if you don’t like it.