Better Aussie Battlers

Posted on 22/06/2016 by Ian

In 1973 an average house in Adelaide would cost you $16,250 – and the average wage was $111.80 a week ($5800 a year) – average rents were $10 a week – a new Holden Kingswood was $2730.00.

In 2014 the average house in Adelaide would cost about $450,000 – and the average wage was 1453.90 ($75,000 a year) per week – average rent are about $400.00 – a new
Holden Commodore was $35,000.

To put it simply, the price of houses have gone up 600%, rent about .25 % and cars about 40% in comparison to the money we were earning in 1973 and are now earning.

I have been thinking about this post for some time; not being an economist, accountant or financial advisor (as they are bullshit jobs!), I reckon, I’m pretty qualified to say, that something is really not quite right here.

Is it just that the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer and most of us are all just sitting in the middle struggling…?

At this point, I should point out that all of this doesn’t matter. I have lamented in other posts about the futility of chasing wealth and power as ultimately, we firstly all end up sitting in a chair, pissing our pants, watching days of our lives and waiting for our relatives to visit who never come….. and, then we die, and take nothing with us (remember, you never see a trailer on a hearse!).

In truth the rent, the house, the car are all useless articles that cost a lot, but perhaps have no real value in our lives. It is no use knowing the price of everything, if you don’t know the value of anything.

And considering that in recent years more and more people are filling their time doing bullshit jobs (see earlier post this week – click here) I ask myself constantly “Self, – Is there such a thing as an Aussie Battler anymore?”

I think the world changed for the Aussie Battler after a couple of wars, a few where we called the returned soldiers Heroes, and then a few smaller wars, or where they Police Actions, where we called the returned soldiers baby killers! (bearing in mind we now all celebrate the ‘heroes’ in all our wars, and Police actions, yet fail to live the values we celebrate in them – I had a spit about this last ANZAC Day and put a video up on my YouTube channel if you’d like to have a look – click here).

Then we had a sexual revolution and a stock market boom (and multiple crashes), the housing boom, there was a baby boom in there somewhere (I think around the time of the sexual revolution or one of the wars – it doesn’t matter, I think the baby boomers are actually the cause of everything!), and now a technological revolution (still going on – is it a boom, or just a series of small startup booms, which become bust – unless you sell porn or are Facebook) and then a global financial crisis (which had a cool, catchy and overused acronym – GFC!) and then….

What? What are we now. Are we Aussie Battlers, pulling ourselves up by our boot-straps, working hours in the hot sun, digging a hole somewhere, lifting some heavy stuff, to return home on dusk, having lamb and three veg for tea (not dinner) and watching the ABC News… do we see the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended… I don’t think so!

Are we still the land of real opportunity, or are we a people governed by those who talk a lot about jobs, struggling Aussie families, ‘moving forward’ (fuck, I hate that phrase, almost as much as the hypocrisy of the person who said it with the ultimate lie of never having a carbon tax in a government that I…. you know the rest of that bullshit – if not just switch on the News now and listen to any politician from any party in THIS election!) … are we now not governed by an elite group of people who themselves couldn’t even define (not that I can?) an Aussie Battler let alone find one.

What really is in the future for these entitled, self obsessed, iphone, ipad, internet, snapchat addicted no hopers, we call a variety of labeled generations, who still live in OUR houses (that we worked bloody hard for as real Aussie Battlers!) and expect everything to be given to them…..

This younger, ungrateful generation who live in a world…… yeah, in a world that……. yeah, in a world that… oh, yeah, in a world that WE created for them! Oh fuck, I think it’s our fault. I know the good old days are gone, but is today just their good old days yet to be realised – sometimes I think not. there are just a few things I know, and we all know if we look, that are real different from then and now:

I know I got my free education (even Uni if you went – which wasn’t encouraged or expected) – and now to go to Uni means to have a HECS debt (the equivalent of my first house deposit) that may cripple you for a decade and beyond.
I know I could walk the streets pretty safe at night – and now we have more Police and more laws and now about 90% of parents drop their kids off and pick them up from school through fear.
I know it was a fair dream to own a home and a car and now the opening stats in this post say, perhaps this is not a dream, but a pipe dream.
I know that if I really wanted a job I just had to go out and look for it – there were enough to go around and now even with a degree, and a HECS debt crippling any wage I earn, I may not get a job, ever.
I knew if I had a career it would probably be for life and now a career is until the next Government reshuffle (or election where promises of jobs never materialise, but cut backs and redundancies do!), business insolvency or stock market crash. Bearing in mind always that the CEO get his payout and lives to start another company or better still get a Government advisory or consultancy role.
I know that if I put a little bit away in superannuation I would be set up pretty good when I retire and now (even today) the retirement age is increasing and I can’t put enough away, even if I have a job, didn’t have to pay my HECS debt and found a secure investment that didn’t go bust or involve massive corporate corruption – if all these things did or didn’t happen I will still struggle to secure any future in retirement.
I knew the local cop, the local bank manager, the local councillor, the local butcher the local milkman (he came to my house?) – and now I do my banking and shopping on line (if I do speak so someone it is in Mumbi!), the banks don’t want to know me except to take my money in fees and give me crippling credit debt – there is no local ‘friend’ or respected member of the community we all look up to and most of all trust.

I don’t think the Aussie Battler is a myth, but, I also don’t think it is our future.

The Merchants of Misery (the media) rule our lives, drive public opinion, topple governments (who needs the CIA when you have CNN), make us buy, buy, buy and most of all ensure that our lives never seem good enough and then provide us with a moral compass that worships possessions, destroys diversity through fear of … what is it now, political correctness gone mad, or racism, or sexism, or basically the fear of standing up like the real Aussie Battler to fight for values that nobody knows what they are…. we are a society of Aussie Battlers with nothing to battle for except our next outrage to Tweet about and our next must have possession (as directed by the Media).

I refuse. I outright, and down right, fucking refuse to be a puppet, to be on mindless media autopilot!

My Dad was a real Aussie Battler, and each day I wonder what he would think, what he would do? (bearing in mind at the end of each day he was to buggered to do more than eat his tea, watch the news and fall into bed to do it all again the next day – and he died at 64 on the dole as he wasn’t old enough for the pension!)

I haven’t mentioned this in the last couple of posts, even though it is the point of my blog and my YouTube channel, and that is being a better man. Maybe it is because, sometimes, just sometimes, to be a better man, you have to understand that not all those around you have the same aspirations – they are still on autopilot, living a life dictated by the Media and the only way to wake them up is to give them a good hard slap (figuratively of course!) Plus, there are those who will tear you down for even getting up any speaking what everyone else is thinking – even though when you speak up and say ‘fuck’ it becomes about saying fuck and not about the subject – always remembering, outrage is the modern equivalent of hard work.

I haven’t also mentioned, the being a better man words, because, well, I felt my blog, with an average of 60 reads per post and my YouTube Channel with a similar average, was just to small, I was too small, I just wasn’t important enough.

Then I thought, fuck it, that’s what everyone thinks – that’s what we are supposed to think, or go shopping to stop thinking at all!

So, standing up, speaking up, even if no-one is listening, is the point of being a better man.

As I have quoted before, as Gandhi said:

First they ignore you,

then they laugh at you,

then they fight you,

then you win.

Better at Bullshit Jobs

Posted on 19/06/2016 by Ian

I didn’t go to work today; let’s face it I haven’t been to work for a while! – and today – and all the other days I haven’t been, nobody noticed. I was a hand in a bucket of water – pull it out and it doesn’t leave a hole.

I actually thought my job was important and I was the linch-pin to the whole show going on.

I had worked hard for years, put up with all the bullshit, all because I thought I was making a difference – and maybe I was. But, now I am gone, I think the difference is still being made, just not by me. (Have a look at my post on the “Indispensable Man” if you think your indispensable – click here)

But, I think more importantly we are thinking things are important when in actual fact they are not really important at all.

Take printing a document. It was supposed to be about now, in our futuristic world of technology, smart phones and the internet, that we were entering the time of the ‘paperless office’ yet there seems to be more actual paperwork, literally, (for everyone under 20 this is the correct use of the word ‘literally’) and it seems to just sit there in baskets on desks with more paperwork coming in constantly to put on top.

I heard recently that an office in the city set up all their printers so you had to actually go to the printer, where you swiped your personal identification card over the printer; only then would the printer print your job; you had to be standing next to the printer to collect it when it came out. The little trick to this system was that every 24 hours all the ‘buffers’ in the printers in this 8 story building all ‘reset’ – wiping out all the documents that had been sent to the printers, that had not been printed and no one had come to collect. There was no pile of paper (in the basket next to the printer for that express purpose?) of print jobs that had not been collected throughout the day, or week for that matter. The little trick to this system, other than obvious confidentiality and security reasons, was that the company saved over $1,000,000 (yes, that is one million dollars) in paper and printing costs alone in one year!

Think of all the bullshit documents that never got printed and just disappeared into the electronic ether at midnight each day.

Also think about whether all that printing, all that word processing, and all that time sitting in front of a monitor was really even necessary?

Maybe you are sitting at your desk right now, working, reading this, and realised that your job is bullshit – it is made up, it is unnecessary, and in fact if you got up and walked out right now, no-one would probably notice for a couple of hours, if not days.

We are not talking about worthwhile work here, we are talking about bullshit jobs, mostly office jobs, administrative jobs, mostly in middle management business or just about everywhere in government and definitely any job involving HR (that’s Human Resources which used to be called Personnel which before that was called the boss who hired you…), regulatory law or the king of all bullshit jobs, local councils!

Worthwhile work and bullshit jobs – what is the difference (You may want to read something else I wrote about ‘worthwhile work’ – click here).

I am in Bali at the moment and there are so many people. I quickly looked up the statistics and Australia has approximately 3 people per square kilometre and Bali has 690 – so, okay, yeah it is a bit crowded! But, there are not too many people doing bullshit jobs.

Most of them are out in their fields growing rice so that their family can eat – certainly not bullshit and certainly necessary. I sat on the balcony of our villa overlooking a field the other morning and watched a guy hand till a quarter acre block of land. I only watched for a while in the morning as I had to have a swim, eat in a restaurant, buy some more shit I didn’t need and then drink beer… But, later in the afternoon when I had filled my day with fuck all, I went back up on the balcony and saw that he was still working, finalising in the twilight the last few metres of tilling his field. Worthwhile work? Most of all I wondered what he was thinking…

Did he think he would be better off:

Being a telemarketer and asking people if they need funeral insurance
Being a public relations expert for a big company managing its image
Being a investment consultant

(Just on ‘investment consultants’ – what the fuck sort of job is that, surely if you knew everything about investing you would be rich and wouldn’t have to work?)

Being a mortgage broker

(Just on ‘mortgage brokers’ – do people think they do it for free! So you go to a mortgage broker to get a loan from a bank, why not just go to the bank?)

Being someone who does administrative support, information technology solutions, security, sells them office furniture, stationary or caters to any of the above (and a 1000 other) bullshit jobs.

I am sure my Bali farmer tilling his field doesn’t give a rats fuck that there is a compulsory seminar on today for all employees at ‘Mortgage Broker Financial Services & Telemarketers Pty Ltd” on equity and diversity in the workplace! (PS: Another group of bullshit jobs in ‘corporate training’!!!)

Even the good jobs are now full of bullshit. Just imagine our Bali farmer tilling his field – in 1 day! Why, because all he did was till his field; he didn’t have to do a business plan and environmental scan, he didn’t have to hire a project manager, surveyor or tilling expert to make sure he was doing it right, he didn’t have to report (in triplicate on 5 different computer systems to 7 different supervisors and sub-managers and department heads), he didn’t have to have a OHS expert approve his hoe (read: “industry standard sharpened soil turning implement – un powered”) …. he just tilled his field!

So, bullshit jobs exist to support other bullshit jobs and although the work gets done, there was really no work in the first place – no fields got tilled, nothing grows in most of these bullshit jobs. They are self creating and self perpetuating and if there isn’t enough bullshit work to fill a bullshit job we have corporate training, seminars and most of all the internet on every desk so if all else fails we can check our Facebook and watch porn!

I don’t know how you escape from a society that seems to thrive with bullshit jobs. Has the industrial revolution and the technological revolution (which we haven’t seen anywhere near where we are going with that one) saved us time and effort – the answer is YES!

But, we have filled in the time that the ‘spinning jenni’ and the computer saved us with bullshit.

Are the poor starving less, is the world free of disease, have we cured cancer, is art more beautify, NO, because we have to get the correct coversheet on the memo to be hand delivered to the boss in the non existent paperless office.

I read in the Advertiser this morning that a survey of South Australia Police found that:

76 per cent felt workloads had either increased or largely increased in the past three years.

75 per cent disagreed or strongly disagreed that management would listen to their concerns.

67 per cent disagreed or strongly disagreed that management conducted adequate assessment before announcing the reforms.

66 per cent believed there were insufficient staff numbers.

64 per cent said service delivery will be worse to much worse under the reforms.

55 per cent felt positive or extremely motivated to go to work.

So, lets look at that at this survey using the ‘bullshit jobs’ methodology.

Firstly (and only really when you consider all the above results from the survey) one would presume that most joined the Police to make a difference and serve society. This is a good start to their employment – it is the thought they are going to be cops, doing cop stuff. Then they find that they are required to spend the bulk of their time on tasks they don’t like and they are not particularly good at (and most certainly haven’t been trained for) which is administration, typing and continuous reporting to micromanagers.

So they find that they joined the Police to be cops and spend most of their time being clerks. Most of these administrative jobs don’t actually need to be done, or a least could be done cheaper and more efficiently (e.g. your average cop types at about 25 word per minute and earns about $80,000 a year – your average typist types at 80+ words a minute and gets paid $35,000 a year – this is easy maths by the way!)

So, in the end everyone ends up doing more clerical work that cop stuff – it gets to the point where they all become obsessed with clerical work (doing the statistics, reporting to the boss, building a CV) that in the end they actually resent anyone doing cop stuff because they are not doing their share of clerical bullshit – in the end they are all competing to do more clerical bullshit than cop stuff. As a matter of fact the entire organisation is now geared to bullshit clerical jobs instead of cops being cops.

By the way – reorganisation doesn’t fix this – organisational culture, which created it is the only way to fix it.

How can a cop be proud of being a cop, wanting to go to work being a cop, be proud of his/her work as a cop, when they spend all of their time being clerks doing bullshit jobs?

So where does that leave us.

I think of it this way…. if all the telemarketers, political secretaries, public relations officers, mortgage brokers, financial planners etc etc, just didn’t go to work for a week, would we notice, would we be worse off – or perhaps better off, but, if all the cops, doctors, school teachers etc etc didn’t go to work, what would happen?

The answer is simple.

The child of the bullshit jobs are bullshit jobs – all offspring are still born, to live a life as aimless zombies, eating our brains, stifling our curiosity, destroying our imagination, cramping invention and eventually, draining our actual spirit.

We must prevent their birth (abstinence worked once but birth control is more efficient) or if during a time of passion, of uncontrolled optimism in the boardroom or at a meeting where emotions run high and we decide to give birth to another bullshit job and it is conceived – have it aborted as soon as possible, you know it will grow up to be no good and just end up breeding with other bullshit jobs to create a ghetto of office cubicles and industry seminars.

Better at Walking Together

Posted on 14/06/2016 by Ian

I was walking along the other day with my wife, holding hands, just walking. We were walking side by side and just out shopping – well, my wife was shopping, I was going along to be with her, because I wanted to.

Yes, we are holidaying in Bali at the moment, we love it, and we love walking around and looking at ‘stuff’. We also like doing it together.

This is when I noticed, we are somewhat in the minority…..

Most couples, even on holidays, seem to be on a quest.

The husbands (or is partner now the only acceptable term) are striving ahead, with the wife (partner!) dutifully following the mandatory 1 metre behind – OR, the wife is eagerly strutting towards the next shop and the husband is dragging his arse the mandatory 2 metres of shitted off, following you around, want a beer more than being here, look on his face and droop in his gait…

Okay, so why are you even out and about together. Just go separately, or is the habitual obligation of your marriage (or partnership) something you have to demonstrate publicly to make us all suffer along with you.

I understand sometimes ‘the man’ feels the obligation to walk in front with the ‘I’m not a tourist and have been here heaps of times before and know what I’m doing and where I’m going’ look on his face in a modern attempt at the cave man confidence which must always be displayed in foreign situations; but, does it really apply to doing something that is supposedly, something BOTH of you WANT to do TOGETHER.

My wife and I (reminds me as I type that the first time you say that at you wedding – “On behalf of my wife and I” – I’ve had a bit of practice at that!) go together because we want to be together, we want to walk side by side, we want to hold hands – it’s not always a journey, sometimes its just walking around. (Just as a note, we hold hands everywhere we go – life is too short not to hold hands!)

And… then there are times we don’t hold hands. That is when we are not together. Sometimes I go by myself and sometimes she does – because we want to and because the other one understands.

I know the moan of ‘having to go shopping with the wife’ situation. Surely, if it is your wife there is no HAVE to. Sometimes I do things that are not things I think are important, or I would like to do (like just about any form of shopping!) but I go because I want to be with my wife, and she may want me to come (the reasons behind this actually still remain a mystery to me – although the occurrence of this is pretty rare, my wife is smart!), so I am not actually doing it for me, there is nothing in it for me…. but, there is, it is making my wife happy.

This reminds me of something I heard/read/imagined about the father talking to his future son-in-law and telling him that ‘marriage wasn’t for him’. Of course the future son-in-law was worried that permission to marry the daughter was going to get knocked back – but, the father went on to say, it is not for you, it is for the other person; you change your life from doing things for yourself to doing things, everything, for another person because you now hold them more important than you. Of course this is a great theory, but, we as humans have a great trait of taking advantage of situations. That’s where the ultimate gift of marriage, or a relationship, or a lot of other things in life, comes down to one thing, TRUST. (I just remembered I wrote about this once before using the Indonesian interpretation and punctuation of the words Anda and saya. Click here to read it)

I put my wife first. Oh, I catch myself a thousand times a day NOT doing that, but, I actually do catch myself. My wife puts me first. We trust each other.

We walk along holding hands, we walk along together, because we want to be together. We remind each other of it each day, by holding hands, by walking side by side, neither following nor leading, both wanting to be there. And, when that is not working out, we catch ourselves, we wait for the other one to catch up, we walf faster to catch up, we walk back and get them, we walk back and get them and carry them if we have to. And, sometimes, walking together can actually be taking a different route so that we end up in the same destination, then we share our stories, tell of our trip, when we are back together.

I sometimes think that being a better man is understanding that some of the simplest things in life are the most important, like going for a walk and holding hands.

PS: I went out to get some photographs in Ubud, Bali. I sat in a little cafe (okay, it was a bar!) and had a coffee (okay, I drank 4 beers!) and took all these photographs in an hour – I did not see one (Yes, you read right – NOT ONE!) couple holding hands. I am going to get a T-Shirt made which reads “At least while you are on holidays HOLD HANDS”.

Being A Better Man

Who never made a mistake, never made a discovery….

Monthly Archives: June 2016

Better Aussie Battlers

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Better at Bullshit Jobs

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Better at Walking Together

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