VOTE! - or else . . .

I’ve just been listening to a spirited discussion about compulsory voting, which operates in Australia – as it does in thirty-one other countries, among them Belgium (I think the earliest system, in operation since 1892), Bolivia, Fiji, Gabon and Liechtenstein.

The chief argument in favour seems to be that citizens should play a part in deciding who runs their country – which would be an unexceptional argument if it weren’t the case that a large number of voters who are completely uninterested in politics have no idea of the merits or even the general attitudes of the candidates, and virtually waste their voting papers.  Interrupting their work or indeed pleasure time to make them attend the poll is simply a waste of time and energy. Another argument is that in countries without compulsory voting millions and millions of pounds or dollars are spent by political parties on advertising  - the dollars spent during an American election would run Greece for a thousand years! And in any event, almost as much money is spent on advertising in countries which have compulsory voting.

Of course it’s also true that many of us vote emotionally rather than rationally – we vote Tory because our parents always voted Tory, or we vote Labour for the same reason; or because we like the look and sound of a party leader, or what he says irrespective of the merits of the argument). So compulsory voting is no more likely to result in a genuinely intelligent result than a ‘free ‘ system when perhaps only 50% of the people trouble themselves to choose a candidate.

There’s actually little doubt that democracy is a fraud and a waste of time – but nevertheless probably the least worst system. The democratic countries usually muddle through to some more or less adequate solution. In most European countries at present this means a Government without an overall majority, and so at best has to act moderately, and at worst is in the hands of some loon – in New South Wales, for instance, the Prime Minister is in the hands of an extreme right-wing any-gay cleric and a selection of loons who call themselves (hold on to your hats) The Shooters and Fishers’ Party. Not quite as lunatic and not in the same universe as the gun-lovers club in the US, the NRA, with it seems every politician safely in their pockets. Now there is the argument that democracy and wealth are irreconcilable.

Give us a smile

As I left the house this morning to walk the dogs at 7.45, a young woman jogger came around the corner and gave me a smile of such friendly warmth that it set me up for the day. An unsolicited greeting as warm as that doesn’t happen too often, and as a smiler and greeter I’ve had to steel myself to the fact that about half the people with whom I try to make even such a brief contact don’t receive a smile with any great pleasure. When I first came to Australia I was astonished at the friendliness of almost everyone one passed in the street, from a simple smile to a ‘Gooday, mate!’ Thing seem to have changed slightly in the last few years, and the number of people who simply ignore a smile or a ‘Good morning’ seems to have increased. Those that upset me most are the people who simply ignore one: even a scowl or a mumble is better than the pretense that one doesn’t exist. I suppose people have a right to scowl or ignore one, but it’s not a pretty response. I can’t of course answer for those ladies covered from head to foot in black, with just a slit for the eyes; they may be smiling delightfully at me, but I shall never know. On the other hand happily there are plenty of returned smiles and greetings, and the two dogs of course are a bonus for dog-lovers, and especially mothers with small children who regularly want to have five minutes’ play with them.

Anyway, all I really want to say as that the exchange of a friendly greeting at eight in the morning really does start the day off well, and I thoroughly recommend it.

What Mr Lilly though of Cancerians

Qualities of the Sign Cancer   Is the onely house of the Moon, and is the first Sign of the Watry or Northern Triplicity, is Watry, Cold, Moyst, Flegmatick, Feminine, Nocturnal, Moveable, a Solstice Signe, mute and slow of Voyce, Fruitful, Northerne.

Diseases   It signifies Imperfections all over, or in the Brest, Stomack and Paps, weak Digesnion, cold Stomack, Ptifick, salt Flegms, roten Coughs, dropsicall Humours, Impostumations in the Stomach.

Places Cancer signifieth   The sea, great Rivers, Navigable Waters; but in the Inland Countries it notes places neer Rivers, Brooks Springs, Wels, Cellars in Houses, Wash-houses, Marsh grounds, Ditches with Rushes, Sedges, Sea banks, Trenches, Cisternes.

Shape and Description   Generally a low and smal stature, the upper parts of more bignesse then the lower, a round Visage; sickly, pale, a whitely Complexion, the Haire a sad browne, little Eyes, prone to have many Children, if a Woman.

Kingdoms, Countries and Cities subject to Cancer   Scotland, Zealand, Holland, Prussia, Algier, Constantinople, Venice, Millan, Genoa, Amsterdam, Yorke, Magdeburg, Wittenburg, Saint-Lucas, Cadiz.

-          William Lilly, Christian Astrology (1647)

There was a little man and he had a little gun

So your son has a birthday coming up; you know he hates black people, so what better present to give him than a gun with which he can go out to a celebrated church with a devout  congregation, and shoot as many of them as he conveniently can. Everyone happy? Well, not perhaps everyone.

The thing is that the father lives in a country where it is as easy to buy a gun as it is to buy a plate of Kentucky fried chicken (maybe easier, in some districts). And the main problem is that so few people think there is anything mistaken or irrational about the situation, and that a minority body which favours it is so efficiently organised and so rich and influential that candidates for political office are convinced (perhaps rightly) that they stand little chance of being elected if they oppose it – and that after election so many continue at the very least to be uncritical of it for fear of losing their seats.

Personally, I have never in all my eighty-plus years held a gun in my hand, wanted to do so, or known where or how to buy one, and have been perfectly happy with that situation. Madmen fixated on one overwhelming conviction are always going to find a way of getting a gun and using it, even in the best-regulated countries. If the most recent deranged individual had not been given his birthday present, he would have had no difficulty in getting hold of a gun by some other means.Well administered gun laws of course cannot prevent all gun crime; but statistics make it perfectly clear than they can diminish the chances of multiple killings. The problem is the ease with which this is possible in the US, and the difficulty with which decent folk are faced when they want to change the situation.

It will be interesting to see what effect the most recent tragedy has on the American public – whether for instance Hilary Clinton’s impassioned plea for gun control will have any greater effect than those of poor President Obama, whose almost every move to improve life for his citizens has been so effectively demolished by Congress. My guess is that the gun-lovers of the NRA – so clearly in a minority, so good at getting their own way - will again prove that there are some situations in which democracy will always lose out.

Stormin' Sydney

Sydney is celebrated for its storms, and presumably was even before the ships of the First Fleet unloaded their cargo of convicts, who were immediately almost flattened into the rain-sodden earth by a downpour the like of which none of them had ever experienced. ‘What a Terrible night it was last of thunder lightning and Rain – was obliged to get out of my tent with nothing on but my shirt to Slacken the tent Poles’, wrote Lieut. Ralph Clark. The deafening thunderstorms which, it seems, used to be pretty regular at certain times of the year seem almost to have gone away; but periods of tremendous rainfall haven’t – ironically, all too often while half the county is in drought the other half is under water.

Just as the sunlight in Australia is of a different quality to that of Europe, the rain here is of a different quality to that of the UK. The light is a revelation. On the first morning I awoke in Australia and looked out of a window in Perth, even the remembered light of the South of France seemed grubby compared to the light which, it seemed to me, must resemble that of pre-industrial Europe; but perhaps not even that. The quality is difficult to describe to anyone who hasn’t seen it. Similarly, the rain which falls in torrents on a really wet day is like nothing one has ever experienced even in the wettest English county. I remember scurrying across a street in Sydney during a rainstorm and understanding for the first time what is meant by ‘sheets of rain’ – and I still can’t resist standing in the shelter of the porch and watching the street turn into a river, with refuse bins tumbling along in the full force of the water. However, the bright side is that even on the wettest day the sun can burst through the clouds and at least a patch of bright blue will appear. Doesn’t happen in Shepherd’s Bush.