Guy Beres

This blog is somewhat involuntarily being put into hibernation. This coming weekend I am moving out of my apartment in London, and for the majority of August I will be abroad seeing as much of Europe as I can before returning home in early September. My access to the Internet will be itinerant and is unlikely to result in a discernable degree of productivity here. I may post the odd photo if I can.

I will be back with a vengeance online here and down under sometime in September. As much as it will be sad to leave London, it will be excellent to be back home. It is something like returning to the old life that I left behind; it really does feel a bit as though I have been living someone else’s life for the past year. In short, it has been a mesmerising experience!

Needless to say, the last year I have spent over here has been fantastic both from both a career perspective and a travel perspective; or should I say, an educational perspective. I have seen a whole bunch of places that ten years ago, I honestly never would have dreamed that I would ever visit. Cities like Rome or Stockholm are no longer just abstract concepts that I read about in the news or glance at idly on world maps. Great Britain, as it happens, amounts to more than just a useless cricket team, an idiosyncratic monarchy and a gaggle of perennial sporting underachievers. The world is truly alive for me now in a way that it never was before, and I am glad that I will be carrying some of the most special parts of it with me in my mind’s eye, whatever happens from here on in.

The once vain dream that maybe, just maybe, the puerile tedium of Big Brother would be removed from our television screens has finally come to pass after eight long years. Of course, it is probably too early in the day to be completely relaxed about the axing, given that there is at least some chance that another free-to-air channel will pick up the concept. Still, one can’t help but think that this result is a big win for television viewers across Australia. The countless hours of air-time that have been filled by the preening and pointless mediocrity of this program can hopefully now be filled by some other slightly less rubbish programs. The once novel concept the show revolved around, shamelessly reloaded as it has been over the past eight years with only trivial changes, can now be laid to rest, as it surely should have been several years ago.

The axing does seem to suggest that by at least one measure at least, the British stomach for rubbish television may be stronger than the Australian stomach. In case you are wondering, Big Brother has just entered a ninth season in Britain. Although admittedly, both countries do retain a strange and inexplicable attachment to Neighbours; that perpetually reanimated corpse of a soapie nag that surely drew its last fresh breath around a decade or more ago.

Linton Besser’s story in the SMH today notes that the Iemma Labor Government’s submission to the Rudd Government’s aviation review calls for a second “Sydney” airport in Newcastle. All public submissions to the review are available on this page, and some of which no doubt make for interesting reading.

The major problems facing the Rudd Government in this area are now three-fold; guiding Australia’s largest city towards an aviation solution that adequately meets the nation’s transport needs, ensuring that any new airport constructed is as environmentally sustainable as is feasible, and overcoming the intense “nimbyism” that is bound to ferment as a result of any proposals for a new airport in the Sydney area. Despite the obvious environmental concerns associated with building a new airport, I don’t think there is any doubting that Sydney can not expect to be able to sustainably service all its international traffic over the coming decades with Kingsford-Smith Airport alone. Building a new airport perhaps just outside the Sydney basin but a reasonably short train journey away from the city is probably the correct answer, and in this respect the NSW Government may be on the right track.

My travels in London have informed me somewhat in the potential benefits of this approach: in London there are no less than five international airports within a one hour train trip of the central business district. High speed private rail links or public rail links, together with high frequency private coach services operate in combination on a 24-hour schedule between each airport and key corners of the city. While I don’t believe that Sydney needs to service anywhere near as much air traffic as London, I have little doubt that the flourishing of London’s secondary international airports have produced many good outcomes. Airports like Stansted Airport have created new jobs, stimulated the local economy, reduced the numbers of people who need to drive to and from the airport, increased competition in the airline industry and reduced the cost of airfares.

If the Rudd Government selects an appropriate location for Sydney’s second international airport, is careful to engage the local community through extensive consultation, and manages the construction and ongoing operations of the airport in an environmentally sustainable manner, this historically controversial and difficult nation-building project could, at long last, prove to be a success.

Of course it needs to happen and be a success, and not just to help service Sydney’s growing aviation requirements; for the sake of the sanity of people living within 10-15 kilometres of Mascot, something needs to happen over the course of the next decade.

One of the delicious ironies of the fairly scathing Museum of Communism in Prague is that it is located above a McDonalds Restaurant, and on the same floor as a casino. To enter the museum you actually have to walk through a door embossed with the casino logo.

It’s hard to say if folks Vladimir Lenin would have appreciated the irony. I don’t suppose when I visit Russia in August I am going to encounter the same kind of irony, in any case.

Fascinating, and well worth the visit if you happen to be in Prague (it will probably take you around an hour). It’s probably worth noting that the Soviets did at least leave the capital of the Czech Republic with an excellent metro system, as some sort of consolation. I am sure to many (very likely most), that isn’t really any consolation at all.  

And what or who is Barangaroo? Barangaroo, of course, was the wife of the famous Aboriginal Australian Bennelong, and is now also the name of the “East Darling Harbour” foreshore development planned by the Iemma Labor Government. One only really needs to consider the “before” and “after” images online here to fully appreciate the unprecedented opportunities that this site offers the city and people of Sydney. It is assuredly quite rare that a city of Sydney’s size and prominence has the opportunity to reinvent such a large sector of land so close to the heart of the city.

While I know at least one person who is relieved to be out of the country for Sydney’s World Youth Day celebrations, personally I am a little disappointed to be missing out on all the hullabaloo. In particular, it would have been nice to have been part of the first major civil usage of the Barangaroo site following the demolition of the site’s storage sheds, which completed in April 2008. This is a site which, fingers crossed, will change for the infinitely better over the coming decades. It will be nice to observe things develop to the point where Sydney inherits a new drawcard for residents and tourists alike, and we all have something just a little more to be proud about.

ELSEWHERE: The State Government’s detailed concept plan is available online here. Some of the World Youth Day pictures online at the SMH are quite spectacular and give a certain flavour of the Barangaroo that is to come for Sydney.

Sure, I think this is kind of clever and “wryly amusing”, but coming as it is supposedly from a liberal publication like The New Yorker, it is also somewhat stupefying. Don’t the magazine’s editorial staff realise (or is it that do they just don’t care?) that there are people out there in the United States whose racist or just plain insane views about Barack Obama could do without any (even satirical) reinforcing? In a not dissimilar fashion to the Mohammed cartoon fiasco, what we seem to have here is a media outlet indulging in a form of lurid self-gratification; self-gratification, of course, in the name of editorial freedom, artistic integrity, or whatever other elitist flag one can conceive of being bandied about.

Either that or it is just a plain colossal misjudgment that records (in wink nudge, ha-ha triplicate) that self-destructive foolishness is alive and well in the liberal media. Needless to say, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for any prominent conservative publication to make their man look like a joke on the front cover, for the sake of some insider giggles. No sir. Only us smart guy liberal types shoot down our own for laughs.

I am on the other side of the world, but even I can scent a whiff of change in the air for NSW Labor. Setting aside for a moment the disturbing and unacceptable schism between the parliamentary leadership and the rest of the party in relation to electricity privatisation, it would have to be a rare punter indeed who believes that the Iemma Government is doing a stellar job of managing the state. Reiterating this perception, Tim Dick has a frankly unsurprising report in the SMH today noting that a Griffith University study has found that the NSW State Government is the most unpopular government in the country. If that wasn’t enough, Andrew Clenell and Alexandra Smith report that a leadership challenge is imminent, backed by party general secretary Karl Bitar, who has fallen out with Iemma and Treasurer Michael Costa over the electricity privatisation issue.

What I think is important at this juncture is for NSW Labor to do some seriously constructive navel-gazing. It’s all very well to talk about changing leaders, but what is really required is a culture shift in the way the party interacts with the electorate and indeed conducts its affairs. It’s arguable that such a shift can only really happen if the parliamentary leadership changes, and on that basis, in the absence of any serious prospects of improvements otherwise, I would support a change in the leadership at this point. Despite his professed loyalty to the Premier, his factional handicap as a member of the Left and his close association (as Deputy Premier) with the current leadership team, I am inclined to think that John Watkins is the right man to take the party forward.

Let’s put the last fifteen months in perspective. The Iemma Government won a fairly strong election victory in March 2007 over an Opposition that was rendered incredible and unelectable by its then leader, Peter Debnam. Thanks to Debnam’s weak leadership and somewhat flawed personage, the government honestly did not encounter the tough electoral challenge it might have expected after four years of decidedly so-so governance. From what I can gather, Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell has not exactly been blazing the trail in the job since obtaining it a month after the election, but nor has he been doing that badly either. I think most voters would agree with me when I suggest that he is a credible alternative leader, even if he is not doing a very inspiring job. This spells trouble for NSW Labor in 2011 unless people’s impressions of the government change for the better and change fairly rapidly.

As a party member, I do feel that Morris Iemma really has tried his heart out to put things right over the past couple of years, thrown into the lion’s den as he was after Bob Carr’s abrupt resignation. Although I tend to disagree with Michael Costa’s views more frequently than I agree with them, I do believe he wants to do the best he can for the party. However, particularly in light of the electricity privatisation debacle, with the party wrenched apart in a recklessly destructive fashion, I don’t think it has been good enough. For many punters, I am sure it has not even been close to good enough. For the good of the party and indeed the state, I think both Premier Morris Iemma and Treasurer Michael Costa should stand aside and let a new leadership team try and steer the government in a fresh direction.

I am really not sure what to make of this article in Uncle Rupert’s Times today. When I first saw the headline plastered over the free morning shitsheets on the tube this morning, I thought that just maybe, Tory Leader David Cameron had taken a step too far in his belligerent, wealthy-folks-oriented conservatism and would get a well-deserved whack for it. The title of the article is “David Cameron tells the fat and the poor: take responsibility”, and remarkably enough, the title is in fact a fairly accurate synopsis of what Cameron is reported as saying:

In a conscious shift of strategy, the Tory leader said he would not shirk from discussing public morality and claimed that social problems were often the consequence of individuals’ choices. “We talk about people being ‘at risk of obesity’ instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise,” he said. “We talk about people being at risk of poverty, or social exclusion: it’s as if these things — obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction — are purely external events like a plague or bad weather.

Of course, this being the Times, these comments are described matter-of-factly in the article, with nary a hint that just perhaps Cameron’s comments are controversial, or for some, offensive. Certainly what we have an example of here is the rhetoric of individualism taken to yet another fanciful extreme, the prejudices of an arrogant upper-class twat fashioned crudely into a faux-bold pronouncement. I don’t believe it to be true that modern society makes individuals feel blameless for their various predicaments, as Cameron seems to be suggesting. If anything, both Britain and Australia have over the last couple of decades moved away from being societies where one’s rights towered over one’s responsibilities, to societies where the balance between one’s rights and responsibilities are more evenly (and perhaps, more effectively) poised.

It is interesting that Cameron is all for heaping responsibilities onto individuals who may or may not have the capacity to solve their problems on their own, but does not seem to be very interested in the responsibilities of society. Moreover, is it not true that society has a responsibility to lend individuals a helping hand when they fall foul (whether partly or wholly through their own hand) of afflictions like poverty, alcoholism, drug abuse, or obesity? Isn’t it not just the individual that has failed when this scenario unfolds, but society itself? What is clear from these sorts of questions is that conservatives like Cameron seem to lack the very basic human ability of taking a walk around the block in someone else’s shoes. Not everyone grows up in a wealthy family, with excellent parents and a good understanding of how to play the 21st century economic game to perfection. Not everyone emerges, blinking, into the light of the global economy at 18, ready to plug in with a metaphorical USB cable dangling from the back of their skull. I don’t see why we should be surprised that people who come from difficult backgrounds might struggle to make the right decisions in their lives, perhaps leading to some of these afflictions taking hold.

The people of Great Britain would do well to remember at the next election that a vote for David Cameron is a vote against the sorts of people right across the kingdom who need a helping hand. If you are thin, white, rich, and don’t give a shit about other people, the Tories are making it damned well clear with comments like this that they are your party.

I have not had the opportunity as yet to completely digest the draft Garnaut Report [PDF from SMH], although I have had time to be annoyed that the government feels comfortable basing decisions on predictions of the distant future when it seemingly does not have the ability to predict the demand for downloading a report from its website now. As I type the Garnaut Review website is completely out of commission and seemingly accepting no traffic. One wonders if the entire domain is being relocated to a different network or provider. Whatever is going on, it is a hardly acceptable level of service. People should not be prevented from viewing information disseminated by the government because it did not adequately predict demand for that information.

But on to more material matters. What I have read of the report so far certainly provides food for thought, and by the looks of things, there are quite insightful nuggets of wisdom embedded throughout. What I appreciate about Garnaut’s analysis is his intellectual pragmatism. I have little doubt that his blue-blooded contrarian streak questions whether the devastating potential consequences of climate change will come to fruition. I have little doubt that the imposition of government controls that could serve to damage the economy in the short-term run counter to his natural intuition. Despite all of this, like most of the rest of us who do not immerse themselves in the climate change science literature full-time, Garnaut knows that he has little recourse given the available evidence but to presume that the scientific mainstream is right, or in the very least, not far from. He therefore respects the need for potential short-term pain in order to reduce the likelihood of severe long-term pain. This is an entirely rational approach under the circumstances.This characterisation of the political problem facing the nations of the world from the draft report sums things up fairly well (pp. 12-13):

Effective international action is necessary if the risks of dangerous climate change are to be held to acceptable levels, but deeply problematic. International cooperation is essential for a solution to a global problem. However, such a solution requires the resolution of a genuine prisoners’ dilemma. Each country benefits from a national point of view if it does less of the mitigation itself, and others do more. If all countries act on this basis, without forethought and cooperation, there will be no resolution of the dilemma. We will all judge the outcome, in the fullness of time, to be insufficient and unsatisfactory.

Resolution of the international prisoner’s dilemma takes time—possibly more time than we have. The world has squandered the time that it did have in the 1990s to experiment with various approaches to mitigation.

Climate change is a diabolical policy problem. It is harder than any other issue of high importance that has come before our polity in living memory.

The prisoners’ dilemma, of course, is a well known logical problem that has important applications in mathematics, economics, computing and psychology. In raw economic terms, Australia would be best served in the short-term if all other nations on the planet cut emissions multilaterally, and we were allowed to continue emitting as much carbon as we pleased. Of course, this is not a tack that every nation can afford to take with respect to climate change. If all other nations decide to cut emissions only when the largest polluters except them cut emissions, the world will remain in a state of emission cut deadlock perpetually. This is a scenario that calls out for leaders; for a few select nations to put their hands up and show the rest of the world how it is done.

Brendan Nelson’s populist response to the draft report indicates that he either does not understand this point, does not really accept mainstream scientific opinion, or otherwise (most probably) has decided that there is more to gain politically from opposing any climate change policy that might involve short-term economic pain:

“It will be an act of environmental suicide, an act of economic suicide, if Australia were to be so far in front of the world implementing an ill-considered, not yet properly developed and tested emissions trading scheme if we haven’t got a genuinely global response,” he [Nelson] told journalists.

It would seem that the leader of the Opposition, cast as prisoner in the apocryphal dilemma, would rat on his fellow prisoner in an instant in a ruthless and foolish attempt to try and stay ahead of the pack. Given what we know about the mainstream climate science, Nelson seems to be risking a lot more than five years imprisonment by refusing to give an inch until some of the other nations of the world give a mile. This approach is a continuation of the willingly ignorant purposelessness that characterised the Howard Government’s approach to environmental issues, and I think that most people who give a fig about what is going to happen on this planet over the next few decades will see that.

In recent months the British capital has been preoccupied with the issue of knife crime, and after several recent high profile attacks, this form of disgustingly petty crime has even superceded terrorism as Scotland Yard’s top law and order priority. It is tragic considering the circumstances, but also interesting that the global security bug-bear of the past five years has been so swiftly and so unceremoniously relegated to the backseat. One wonders if the global strategists and commentators who have gone dined out in recent years on the challenges posed by Islamic fundamentalism and Al’Qaeda will now turn their hands and minds to crime of a more conventional variety.

Although admittedly I have been lucky to have scarce exposure to it myself, recently I have been provided with direct cause for concern about crime levels in London. Walking home from work the other day I arrived on a street corner in just enough time to see a tall, muscular African man strike a woman with full-force in the face, knocking her to the ground. The man fled the scene with a companion, and myself and a group of startled onlookers approached the woman and called the police. It was unclear what the reason for the assault was, but the woman’s glasses had been shattered by the force of the man’s blow, sending shards of glass into the face and one of her eyes. Fortunately it was not too long before the police and an ambulance arrived, and we believe the attackers were apprehended.

It was a strange experience because it was both shocking and yet, scratching a little deeper, not too surprising. We all see the stories on the nightly news, and read about them in newspapers and magazines. When we are reminded that these stories are real and play havoc with real people’s lives, it disturbs us and provides some food for thought about the real state of society today. In the developed world at least, we may well be living in more civilised societies than ever before, but I sincerely doubt that thought provides any comfort to the random victims of modern society’s vices - who, let’s not kid ourselves - are still out there and all around us. Realistically, only lady luck excludes us from being part of the main story.