Not making it any more

6
by Economics, Environment • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Don’t know if you saw the recent tv program on the geological history of Australia. Some early stuff I didn’t know. For example that enormous mass of iron ore in WA was deposited when the first primitive organisms that could generate oxygen began doing so and all the iron in the seas rusted. The iron and other ores around Broken Hill generated in the deep seas which then ran through this part of the continent. Coal and gas of course laid down when the then lush tropical vegetation died and rotted and was buried far underground by sediments. All flukes really, that the deposits occur in Australia, and flukes dependent on conditions that can never be repeated from millions, even billions, of years ago. No more of that stuff being made on this planet.

On top of the land surface Australia had a rich biodiversity of abundant plant and animal life, also the result of millions of years of evolution and ecosystem development. This biodiversity sustained Aboriginal people in considerable comfort for around 50,000 years, and then provided the basis for English colonists to fell timber, graze sheep and cattle on the extensive grasslands, and grow crops where the soils were deep and organically rich. Not building diversity and rich soils any more.

There’s an old, sorta joke, which says “Want to invest in a sure thing? Buy land, they’re not making it any more”. It’s a message that should have been given to every citizen of Australia to use as a reminder that resources are limited. Instead we have behaved for two and a quarter centuries as Australia Unlimited. Big country, plenty of soil, plenty of trees, plenty of mineral resources. Now the crunch is coming, and there are a couple of urgent responses we need to make. We need to ensure that a good proportion of the staggeringly huge profits being made from digging up those made-once-only mineral resources come back to benefit the 21,999,997 of us who are not mining billionaires. That they are used to create a stronger better Australia as a solid home for us when resources start to dwindle or the demand for them disappears. One of the things we could do with it is sort out infrastructure needs as the climate changes – infrastructure like efficient irrigation, like decent efficient transport, like support for large scale renewable energy projects. And support for individuals in education, health, aged care and so on. The recent budget, trying to balance all those needs, pulling up the blanket to cover the head only to expose the toes, is a classic example of failure to use the mining resources wisely.

And the other response is to stop destroying remaining forests and to start restoring soils to good health. Not least because we need the environment as healthy as it can be to meet the changing climate.

What’s that other saying? Oh yes,”A stitch in time saves nine. Time we started urgent stitching.

Himself is his own dungeon

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by politics • Tags: , ,

Much discussion, both at his trial and in the wider world, about whether Breivik is “mad or sane”. I am guessing that at least part of it is a technical issue related to his sentencing. Seems incomprehensible to me, but if I understood correctly the maximum Norwegian sentence for “murder while sane” is 20 years. And it seems not to matter whether you killed one person or 77 people, you don’t even get a couple of sentences one after the other, 20 years is your lot. Now if I am right then all you can say is the law in Norway is a ass. On the other hand I assume that if found to be insane then Breivik gets locked up for rest of life or at least until he is found to be sane again. This is all baffling. No of course I don’t agree with death penalty, it has no part in civilised countries, but a justice system that doesn’t see Breivik in jail for life (like the comparable Martin Bryant in Australia) is a busted system. Perhaps they thought such an event could never happen in Norway, but they must have had serial killers occasionally?

But let’s leave that aside. I’m guessing that a twenty year sentence for Breivik will see Norwegians marching in the streets, but that is their business. Instead I wanted to consider the broader question of sane/insane irrespective of the law. At one level the question itself is insane. Here is a creature who blows up innocent passers-by on a city street; then goes to island and shoots dead dozens of innocent young people one after the other, hunting them down without mercy, in a scene too horrible to think about for long; then pleads “self-defence” in court! Stark raving mad, just on the evidence of those three broad facts.

But that doesn’t take us very far, really. Think about it. There are plenty of insane people who commit murder, no question. All kinds of childhood circumstances, sexual aberration, brain malfunction or injury, bullying or other personal negative interaction, can lead to single or serial or mass murders. No problem recognising, say, the Moors murders, or the House of Horrors, or Jeffrey Dahmer, or indeed the man who suddenly kills his aged parents, or his children, as being the results of all kinds of mental problems. But that’s not what we have here, nothing like it, so do we need some other concept of “insane”?

At least since around 1900, when the very nasty Anarchists were in full flight, there have been small groups of people all over the world, fanatical light gleaming in eyes, so utterly convinced of the rightness of ideology or religion that they were happy, more than happy, to kill any who disagreed with them, or who merely didn’t recognise their Truth. Worse, their hatreds were so strong as to include those of a different ethnic group (to their own tightly defined one), a different skin colour, different language, different political sympathy. All helps to fuel the urge to kill these people who are different, who are, must be, less than you, less, indeed, than human. So shoot them, blow them up with bombs, crash planes full of them, fly planes indeed into tall buildings full of them. Kill them, men, women, children, kill them all. It is an ethnic cleansing in reverse, where a small group of believers would happily, if they could, cleanse the rest of the world of those different to themselves.

These groups arise like poisonous mushrooms on a dung heap. They may spend some years whipping up each other’s hatreds, they may launch straight into bomb making. Some, like the Anarchists, eventually, fade away, but there will always be another take their place. You know them. Oh they may wear different badges, espouse different causes, claim different outrageous provocations, but they are all one, brothers in arms. They are the IRA (and still, heaven help us, the “Real IRA”) and the UDA, ETA, Bader-Meinhof, Al-Quaeda, American Militias, the MNLF, the LeT, Taliban, Ustashi, elements of the Tea Party, Shining Path, the Neo-Nazis in so many countries, Nepalese Maoists, anti-abortionists, the KKK, and so on. And beyond them are the apparently non-ideological killing-spree people. I used to think people like Martin Bryant and the Columbine killers were different to the terrorists. Descriptions of the killers at the Bombay train station, smiling as they hunted down and killed innocent people sound no different to the murderers roaming the school halls at Columbine (and many others) or picking off tourists at Port Arthur. The common thread is the love of killing, and a fake sense of grievance (“bullying” in school, or being sacked from a workplace, or receiving “poor” service, are no different to excuses related to religion, or migrants “stealing jobs”, or some distant historical claim to land).

Once, and still in most cases, formal terrorist groups were close knit cells or network of cells in one part of a country, and shared a common specific aim of gaining some territory, say. These days with internet communications, individuals who share an ideology of hatred and a love of killing, can get in contact with like minded individuals and groups all over the world. The hatred can ferment in the suburban bedroom to the glow of the computer screen, and ideas can be gained about killing methods and tactics.

Which brings us back to Breivik. He fits comfortably into this framework, does he not? Is he insane? Of course he is, but then the members of all these groups are insane. I guess the only question would be whether he was more insane than the people blowing up a nightclub in Bali, or an office building in Oklahoma, or a shop in Belfast, or a school in Afghanistan. No, still not seeing it.

An uncomfortable fact to ponder. All of those groups and individuals (with the possible exception of the school shooters) have been, are, supported by some, often many other people (even, astonishingly, Martin Bryant, defended as a victim by the gun lobby, pretending he was set up in order to bring in more gun control). However bad the massacres, however many innocent people die horribly, supporters will argue the cause is just, the “war” must be fought.

Which brings us back to Breivik again. Desperately arguing he is not insane, that he was at war with these children, that he was at war with “multiculturalism”, that he acted in self-defence and so on. That is, pretending that he was some kind of “soldier” in a legitimate cause, although, when he stopped hunting down screaming, crying, terrified, unarmed children and shooting them dead, he quickly demanded to surrender to the armed policemen who were finally arriving. No gunfight with armed men for Mr Breivik.

He needs to be declared for what he is, insane, and locked up, incommunicado, to rot in prison until he dies a forgotten old man. So do they all. There needs to be a clear statement from the civilised people of the world that these murderous thugs are all psychopaths, sociopaths, whatever, but mad. No glorious causes, no pretend flags and uniforms, no war language, just insane. And each one in turn, locked up like Breivik for ever. No noble speeches, no martyrdom, no communication with deluded followers and supporters. Just a declaration of insanity. A clear message to supporters – you are following madmen.

Might help, a bit.

Milton “Comus”

he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts benighted, walks under the midday sun; Himself in his own dungeon

A voter who uses his money as votes

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by Economics, politics • Tags: , ,

Here’s an idea. How about citizens can have multiple votes, the number determined by their wealth? Billionaire mining magnates like Palmer and Rinehart get the minimum one vote each, “ordinary working families” get, say, 100 for each family member; single mothers in housing estates get 1000; refugees get 2,000, and everybody else is somewhere in between. There, that should concentrate the minds of politicians wonderfully eh?

Oh, and poor old Clive and Gina? Well, they would still have the option of buying television networks or full page ads in newspapers. If they could see a message that would get across.

Might need a bit of tinkering and fine tuning, a bit of adjustment of precise numbers of votes per individual, but generally speaking I think it would have to be a considerable improvement on the present arrangement which is effectively the reverse.

Oh and a gentle reminder:
If you would like to see your favourite blog recognised in the big wide world of the Best Blogs 2012, voting for the People’s Choice Award is still open (just)!
You can vote here. Just click on the button on the right (then go alphabetically to find THE Watermelon Blog, ie under T not W). Voting will close Wednesday 9 May at 5.00 pm. All winners will be announced on Thursday 10 May at 10.00 am by the Sydney Writers Centre. Come on now, pretty please?

PS The title, rather cheekily comes from a somewhat different, and reverse, context- Paul Samuelson 1970:

The consumer, so it is said, is the king … each is a voter who uses his money as votes to get the things done that he wants done.

Faith Less

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by Atheism, Education • Tags: , , ,

The other day I saw a sign advertising something called “Catholic Education Week”. While thinking, snarkily, they had mis-spelled the third word, I saw the slogan – “Faith in every child”. I paused, briefly, as I am sure you have, to admire the cleverness, nay genius, in that play-on words. Then I got a bit cross, and I thought I’d share my crossness with you.

Not, I hasten to add, crossness merely with the Catholic “educators”. For all I know there is also a “Jewish Education Week”, a ”Muslim Education Week”, a ”Evangelical Education Week”, and a ”Scientology Education Week”, all of whom could use exactly the same slogan.

Instilling “faith” in children is indeed what religion is about, but is precisely the opposite of what education is (or should be) about. Here are some alternative education slogans for you:
“Curiosity in every child”
“Inquiry in every child”
“Confidence in every child”
“Ambition in every child”
“Caring in every child”
“Achievement in every child”
“Balance in every child”
“Happiness in every child”

I invite you to add some more.

Tell you what, keep “faith” away from a child until it is seven, and I’ll give you an educated and rational adult.

Bigger, dearer, exclusiver

6
by Media • Tags: ,

The other day there was Sebastian Coe (who I remember as that slim young magical runner, not the middle aged Lord Coe he has become) did one of those “Here come the Olympics” Press occasions, this time to announce 100 days to go until London launches into its third Olympics. This time of course it will be a vastly different event to those of 1908 (when the modern games had barely begun) and 1948 (when Britain used it, though in a very austere way, as a way of firmly leaving the war behind). And that difference over the course of just over 100 years I suppose sums up why my interest in the Olympic Games now verges on zero.

The sums of money now spent to hold an Olympic Games are obscene. Huge stadia are built, transport reorganised, media outlets pay for exclusive rights, gimcrackery souvenirs are produced in landfill quantities. Most facilities continue in use for a short time, then fall into disuse, then get demolished. Rarely do facilities built for the specific conditions of the games suit what an individual city may later need. The result of all that is that the major criterion used to evaluate Games “Bids” (and that is a whole other topic) are whether a city and country can afford them. No poor country could hold a modern games, and that in itself is a damning inditement of the loss of the “Olympic Spirit”. As is the tendency for winning cities (most notably China) to bulldoze poor housing and move beggars off the streets, so as not to detract from the glossiness.

And if poor countries can’t afford to hold the Games, athletes from poor countries can’t afford to hold Olympic medals. Once upon a time the Olympic mythology echoed “it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game” credo. Not any more. It has long been known that the number of medals a country wins (and the Olympics was supposed not to be a competition between countries but athletes) is directly proportional to how much money a country spends (so much so that Australian Olympic officials keep demanding more and more money otherwise our “medal count” will go down). These days sports training is a science, and equipment is also very important (the Australian bobsled team was complaining the other day they had a $5000 dollar sled and needed a $25,000 one to be competitive. I hate to think how much things like cycles and rowing boats cost). Athletes from the great majority of countries in the world have no chance of winning a medal, no matter how much natural talent a swimmer from, say, Guinea-Bissau might have.

Look if the Games were like those of 1908, where Australians with a bit of natural swimming or running talent paid their own way to Britain to chance their arm (and legs) against the best other amateurs who turned up, I would be happy to wave a little Australian flag and cheer them along. But Olympics 2012? I doubt I’ll bother watching.

What about you?

Well played sir!

32
by politics •

Apologies for my recent absence from this blog. Just for fun I developed a case of Shingles. I suggest, if you can avoid it, you don’t; and if you have some odd symptoms, ask your doctor “Could this be Shingles?” just in case. Anyway, slowly recovering to the stage where I can write again.

One major political event during my absence has been the announcement by Bob Brown that he was resigning as leader of the Greens and would not contest the next election for the Senate. A great deal has been written about Bob in his role not only in Australia but worldwide in establishing both conservation movements and Greens political parties, but I thought I would add a couple of observations of my own.

I met Bob some years ago, and was immediately struck by the fact that his private persona was exactly like his public one. You will often hear it said about politicians, carefully guarding, on the advice of image makers, their public persona, that either they are much more unpleasant in real life than on tv, or they are much nicer in private than they appear to the public. Bob Brown was a classic case of what you saw was what there was – image and reality were the same.

The second unusual thing about him politically was that he answered questions honestly and thoughtfully and individually. He didn’t go out to the press pack with his prepared slogans and practiced one phrase answers. but dealt with each question on its merits. I was struck this week how rare this was, in listening to the Victorian Attorney General, quizzed on his setting up a parliamentary query on child abuse by the churches, answering every question with the same carefully memorised three sentence “reply”. This essentially said he was setting up a parliamentary enquiry because he was setting up a parliamentary enquiry because … well you get the idea. But they almost all do it these days, to the extent that it comes as a shock to hear a politician answering a question directly.

As I write this I am struck by a thought. Being the same person in public and private, and answering questions in a rational way, are both features of our everyday lives. Do any of you not behave like that to family, friends and colleagues? And yet we have come to accept, to our detriment, that politicians live in some other world in which that behaviour is not normal.

Bob Brown showed that it doesn’t have to be like that, and he will be missed.

Note – It is time to vote for your favourite blog (you will find this one alphabetically under THE Watermelon Blog) at the Sydney Writer’s Centre Awards. I will try to incorporate the voting button on this post so subscribers will get it in their feed, but if I fail, could you visit the blog please, admire the new design if you haven’t yet seen it, and click on the voting button on the right. You can vote for more than one blog (there are 900 nominated) but you can only vote in one session. It would be good to feel I was getting things right for you

Anyway, will try to get back into regular posting (and tweeting), health permitting. See you again soon.

People's Choice Award

Intermission

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by Uncategorized •

Missed two writing deadlines this week (one of which you should be reading instead of this) which I never do. Have been very unwell. Don’t know if related to my underlying problems or their treatment, or are three symptoms of some nasty unrelated infection, or are fluke coincidence of three separate new problems. Anyway, felt too unwell to write.

Should be adding all kinds of new pithy, witty and wise observations of the passing parade for your delectation and that of the judges of Best Blogs 2012 who will be culling hundreds of blogs this week. But they will just have to be content with 8 years of accumulated blog posts, here I stand I can do no other.

I will write again as soon as I am able. If you follow the blog, or follow me on Twitter you will know instantly I have emerged from my den. But do keep calling on, browsing around, sure there is plenty to keep you entertained. I will try to respond to comments on any older posts or other pieces of writing.

Keep safe and well, see you again soon.

The kindness of strangers

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by Economics, politics • Tags: , , ,

Rain rain rain and more rain recently. Records set all over the place yet again, but shoosh, don’t mention climate change.

Not what I wanted to talk about here though. Was following bulletins anxiously during the worst of it, checking road closures and the like as family members were travelling. And seeing interviews from SES volunteers about how many call outs they had attended and so on. What would we do without them? I’m OK, up on a hill, but many people weren’t. Trees through roofs, needing tarps; houses and shops needing sandbags; cars off roads; rescues here, rescues there, rescues everywhere. It’s hard, tiring, dirty, often dangerous work, called out at any time of day or night, and, given the nature of the work, called out in atrocious weather. And the people in the yellow uniforms are volunteers, doing it for love of community, the kindness of strangers.

It has thankfully been another quiet Summer for the bush fire brigades around here. But they stay alert, keep the trucks ready, maintain the hoses, practice the drills, raise funds, inform the public. Making sure they are ready for the return of El Nino and a hot dry Summer. Then they will be as busy as the SES in a storm. Volunteers of course, bush fire brigades, on alert day and night through the Summer, and even in winter for road accidents and other fires.

A little while ago our village got a defibrillator (this is a subject close to my own heart), and with it a small group of locals volunteered to have training in its use and be available to use it in an emergency. Many people in our community have done first aid training, some even join St John’s Ambulance to provide more formal first aid services for sporting and community events. On a slightly different but related path are the Meals on Wheels volunteers.

We are used to community volunteers doing all kinds of work around schools, young people, scouts and guides, helping the elderly, Cleaning up Australia, running community festivals and shows and fetes and cake stalls. In fact society couldn’t function very well without our unpaid volunteers, supported as much as possible by government.

Next time you hear a conservative muttering about how human society is red in tooth and claw, no such thing as free lunch, everything must have a profit motive otherwise it won’t work, remember that they have obviously never been caught in fire or flood, had a heart attack miles from hospital, or been involved in community activities.

But be kind to them, as you are to any stranger.

Letter to the Reader

7
by Media • Tags: , , , ,

G’Day. Hi. Bonjour. Hullo. Guten Tag. Mornin’ all. A multilingual greeting to mark a new update of the clustrmap which has been analysing where Watermelon visitors come from geographically (see “Map of recent visits” about half way down right hand column). Runs in a great arc from New Zealand through SE Asia and Europe to NW USA, with relatively few from Africa and South America. But a very pleasing spread, Watermelon fans are a very cosmopolitan lot! Couple of odd stats. There are as many visitors from the US as from New South Wales, where I live. There are as many visitors from California, 20,000km away as there are from the Australian Capital Territory 50km away. The number of visitors from the UK is only one sixth of those from the US. Go figure. Anyway, wherever you come from, welcome, come again please.

“How am I”, I hear you ask? [The early part of this recent saga is the currently last chapter of my autobiography under the "Dream" tab above]. Well, do you want the good news or the bad news? No, not quite, but if 2011 was the year of having unpleasant treatments to deal with an unpleasant disease, 2012 is the year of dealing with the side-effects, after-effects, of that treatment, while continuing part of the treatment for 2 more years to prevent re-occurrence. Sort of like juggling a set of quite different objects – keeping ball, knife, glass of water and bunch of flowers in air simultaneously while standing on one leg and singing “Yesterday”. The two most common things people say to me (in a relieved tone of voice) are “You’re looking well” and “Aren’t you lucky”. Both, while absolutely true, make me quietly rage inside.

Which reminds me. Down at the bottom of the right hand column, “I am reading” I try to keep up to date what I am, you know, currently reading. Have been through a series lately of biographies of Rousseau, Keating, now Steve Jobs, and shortly Dickens. Not as bizarre a mixture as it might seem. Couple of common threads. Four geniuses, each in his own way, four absolutely unique characters in the way we all aspire to being unique, moulds broken etc. And all four, conversely, really difficult, in many ways unpleasant characters, while exuding charisma and often charm. Self-centred, driven, paranoid, domineering, thoughtless, careless with human relationships, and so on. People with a rage inside and often a rage outside as well. All to different degrees, obviously, in different combinations, but put the four in a room together and it would be an intellectual cage fight, no holds barred. But all admirable for their creativity. Do the two things go together? Is genius, creativity, necessarily associated with the kind of person you wouldn’t want to share a house with and certainly wouldn’t want to work for? Do nice guys and gals finish last? Do we have to put up with bad manners from people who are doing great things? Yes, it’s an old question, and I doubt it will ever be answered. Certainly not in a single post on a blog no matter how creative, how much a work of genius, that blog is. Which brings me to the final part of this Letter to the Reader

Decided to enter the blog in the “Best Australian Blogs” competition. You’ll see the logo button in the right column near the top. Click on it and it will take you to the Sydney Writer’s Centre site with all kinds of information about the help they provide to new and old writers, including courses (both for locals and online for people from America, Britain, France … Guadeloupe) and so on. Go on, have a look, I’ll wait until you get back.


Hullo, back already? Hope that was of interest to any budding or established writers among my blog friends. Anyway, when I entered they sent the information below. Have a quick read and then I’ll ask you to do couple of things for me.

What’s happening with the People’s Choice Award?
If you’ve entered the People’s Choice Award, you’ll receive an email on Thursday 12 April 2012 with details about how this round will work. Remember that nominations do not count as votes. So we recommend you let your followers know you’ve entered, and get them ready to vote for you from 5.00pm on Friday 13 April 2012.

We will start sorting blogs on Friday 13 April 2012
So make sure your blog is as good as it possibly can be by the 13th! Any great ideas you’ve always wanted to write about, or that face-lift you’ve been struggling to make the time for, make sure you squeeze it in by Friday 13 April 2012!

What criteria will your blog be judged on?
The criteria for the Best Australian Blogs competition is 70% writing, 20% appearance of your blog and 10% interaction and social media. Make sure your social media activity can be discovered through your blog.

Now you know what I am going to say. Do I need to do anything to give the blog a face lift (within limits of WordPress)? Any features you’d like to see, anything you don’t like? You are the customers, always right. Well, maybe not always, but, you know. It’s your blog, I just work here, let me know how you feel about the content (which goes for anytime of course, not just with a competition on). Second, one of the criteria for the judged part (as distinct from the People’s Choice” part) is relationship to social media. I’m very active on Twitter, and if you like what I do here you will like what I do there. Easy to follow, just click on the “Follow Watermelon_Man” button on the right. I’m always encouraging my Twitter followers to visit the blog, and they do, and it would be great to have more movement from this direction. Conversely, more of you actually following this blog to get automatic updates would look good for my blog cred. And finally, when the 13 April looms, It would be really great if you could vote for me. I will put a post up, with instructions, but it won’t be complicated.

What’s in it for you? Well, a warm sense of pride that you chose wisely all that time ago and are following a really really good blog. A short list or win would boost visitors so I would have to perform even better for you all, and there would be a lot more commenters for you to interact with. And finally the prizes involve writing courses at the Centre, so I could learn to write more proper and you would get a much better quality blog. So, easy, suggestions for improvement before the eagle-eyed blog judges come calling; twitter following; and then a really high voter turn out come 13 April. Bit of a boost to this old ego, that’d be.

Cheers!

Open for business

2
by Economics, Environment • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

NSW govt approving uranium exploration; Qld opposition to dump Wild Rivers legislation; Victoria trying to get cattle into high country; South Australia downgrades renewable energy; Tasmania demanding to continue forest destruction; NT wanting crocodile “hunting”; WA prescribed burning big areas of forest. CSG, seal culling, duck shooting, flying fox culling, wood chipping, land clearing, estuary dredging, salmon “farming”, blocking wind farms.

What do all these things have in common? Activities by state governments, Labor and Liberal, that have, or will, cause enormous damage to their respective states. Nothing much in common, these state premiers, not much similarity between the different states, but time after time, often within days of winning an election, away they go with an announcement welcoming some destructive program. Usually with the identical words “We are open for business”, as if they have just set up a used car yard.

Something else one of the premiers and a soon-to-be-premier have in common is the bright idea of adding the “cost of the carbon tax” to electricity bills. See, this is clever because this will make people hate Labor when they see this extra cost go on the bills. But, hey, guys, you gonna do that, we need a bit of balance. You must also add to the bills the increasing CO2 levels, the rising temperature levels, the cost of lost production as a result of droughts and floods and storms. What’s that, those costs would greatly exceed the few dollars from a carbon price? Good heavens, really, hadn’t thought of that. You know, I understood that the costs of years of infrastructure neglect and privatisation of power companies had added far more to the bills than carbon price, but hadn’t thought about the costs of climate change. Don’t suppose you guys had either, eh?

Same with “open for business”. It’s always billions to be made here, and thousands of jobs over there, and export markets and infrastructure, oh, and did I mention billions of dollars? All put on the plus side of the public ledger, trumpeted by the media. But what they don’t add, to balance the ledger, is the ultimate costs to the state of cleared land, polluted ocean, dried up rivers, lost biodiversity, extinction of species, air pollution. Nor even of more direct costs in poor human health, imbalance of the economy, infrastructure costs, depletion of resources. Pretty nasty business all of it.

So, state premiers, you want to play businessman “running a state like a business”? Good, go for it. But remember real businessmen, and businesswomen, prepare real balance sheets for the balance as a whole. And when costs outweigh profits it’s time to reconsider.

Quite a lot of cost being imposed on states these days. And largely illusory profits.