Starting on Disability
Ideas: Keperra Kings
Mike Baguley interview
Mandy participatein.or for social participation 18-65
SIENA Centracare
Tree planting along the local creek with other locals and local groups
Brisbane City Council organised a tree-planting morning in Ferny Grove at Selkirk Crescent this last week. I went along and there were three other members of Transition The Grove there. They also happen to be members of other local bushcare groups – Kedron Brook Catchment Group and Men of the Trees. It isn’t surprising that we get a lot of overlap in membership with some of the locals who are deeply committed to working for this area through local groups.
Transition The Grove makes a priority of working with local groups and helping them with what they are already trying to achieve. So Transition The Grove has joined Kedron Brook Catchment Group as an organisational member because the work the Kedron Brook Catchment Group does is so valuable in building local resilience. We regularly announce their events on our Community Calendar and often we send out an additional electronic newsletter to our members who have said they are interested in environmental issues telling them what is on. Similarly with Men of the Trees.
Cr Andrew Wines and Jane Prentice our Federal MP for Ryan were both at the tree planting. We also try to give local politicians and candidates publicity when we meet them out and about with their sleeves rolled up. This is one way we can help locals know who is doing what. We think it is important that whatever party gets elected the candidates are people who are actively working out and about in this local area. The best way to know that is if locals see them doing things. We want candidates to be more than just talk. We want good things to be happening on the ground for this area.
The tree-planting at Selkirk Crescent also had the Girl Guides along in force helping. The Scouts and Guides and Cubs are groups we come across all over the place doing active work for the community. They were at Clean Up Australia Day. They were at Anzac Day. They are probably at all sorts of other events. We’ve got two troups locally – the ones at Wahminda Grove and the ones at Mitchelton-Grovelly. We cannot speak highly enough of either of these troups. Getting your children involved in Scouts and Guides is a great way to set them on a good path in life.
Another organisation that was at the tree-planting at Selkirk Crescent is Geckoes Wildlife. Have you had the joy of watching one of their wildlife displays. They come with a lot of boxes and they take the bird or animal or reptile out one by one. Some of them can be stroked. They are sooo beautiful and remarkably placid with their handlers because they are managed so well. The children absolutely love it and so do the grown-ups.
And they had a sausage sizzle and free native plants to give away to the crowd of hard-working volunteers. We have to admit it was great fun and lovely being down by the creek in the park. It didn’t seem hard work at all. The Council Rangers like our delightful Anna Bourke seem to work to make these events much more a fun community get-together than something that seems hard work. We’re going to be losing Anna for a while to be a mum and we wish her very well with the birth. Anna is a great Council Ranger and I for one hope that we see her around here again in the not too distant future. Council Rangers work for our community coordinating bush regeneration and wildlife protection and weed control and wildlife surveys and community seminars. Our community gets outstanding value from its Council Ranger. Let your Councillor Andrew Wines in this case know what a good job they do and that you value them.
Film nights and community currency
One of the great things about working closely with the President of Transition The Grove John is I get first showing of all the great ideas he comes up with to share at meetings and local film nights.
He’s just tracked down a DVD of a movie from the US called “Carbon Nation” and I got to sit down with him and watch it through. I have to say folks its jolly interesting and great to watch. Some of this stuff is inspirational exciting fun. It makes you feel like we’re on the crest of a wave of something big and good. Like it says in the movie: Don’t think big: Think HUGE! Carbon Nation is from the US but it gives you the feeling they’re quite a way ahead of us and its where the future is going very fast. Huge opportunities to make some amazing differences. So that movie is coming up at Transition The Grove’s next community movie night which is on September ??? at 7pm at Ferny Grove State High School Resources Centre and you’re all invited.
Did you miss our last movie night the movie “Home Grown”? It was a delight. Don’t worry. We’ve been asked to show it again so we’ll do that some time. It is just the most heart-warming movie about the Gervase family and what amazing stuff they do growing food and making fuel sufficient to feed the family and run a business from their own suburban property.
Well the other thing President John has been busily researching is community currency. He’s always exploring ideas and this one is a real beaut. It’s the way of the future folks as the currencies of the world get less and less trustworthy. Do you know where money comes from? The story of the creation of money is one of the most amazing stories of how our whole society runs. Money is made when banks make a loan to someone. The banks don’t have the money to start with that they loan out. The banks create money out of thin air and loan it to people or businesses who then have to pay it back with interest. And this is how money starts. It is literally where money comes from. Our banks are private businesses but they have the legal right to make our money supply and to make a profit out of thin air. Isn’t that amazing. Yet even so the currencies of the world are getting more and more spun out by all the weird and contorted instruments of investment that are forever being dreamed up by people wanting other people to make them rich.
One way that ordinary people can start to escape from some of this madness is through LETS systems and community currencies. These have been around for quite a long time now and there is a lot of knowledge and expertise developing. With computers most of them are now web-based.
Two that John has been looking at are Bitcoins and Community Exchange Systems or CES. Bitcoins are an on-line way of completely doing without banks or third parties. They allow any two individuals to trade together with bitcoins as a medium of exchange. There is no third party keeping records. It is all done by clever software algorithms on each computer. Community Exchange Systems are used by LETS groups worldwide. It is software developed by a South African bloke and the trades are recorded on databases that reside in South Africa. I gather it works well but clearly it depends on this one bloke not falling over. There are other approaches to community currencies such as the Totnes Pound which is a printed currency used by the Transition community in Totnes in the UK with huge success.
Well we’ll be following developments with community currency ideas. I’m sure nothing will happen fastbut it is an interesting idea. There’s lots of learning and value that can be had from having a LETS system a local economic trading system and a community currency. Maybe it will happen around here some time.
Mycorrhizal fungi and heirloom beans
Have you been getting out into your garden yet? The weather doesn’t get much better and its an ideal time to be pruning and planting and fertilising.
Remember what we’re always trying to do is to create quality soil to feed the soil to build up the mycorrhizal fungi in the soil. That is spelled mycorrhizalThe micorrhyzal fungi are what transport nutrients into the roots of plants. The plants can’t feed themselves. They need the mycorrhizal fungi to feed them and in exchange they provide the fungi with sugars from sunlight by photosynthesis. So the plants and the mycorrhizal fungi under the soil work together. The fungi need protecting from sunlight and they need living plants to be growing in the soil to work with them and feed them sugars. So don’t leave your soil bare. Don’t let the sunlight get at your soil and don’t leave it without living plants. Remember its what’s below the soil that matters most.
So that is what we’re always trying to do. Trying to build up the nutrients in the soil. Trying to build up the humus in the soil. But more than anything trying to build up the mycorrhizal fungi in the soil.
Well this week we planted a whole lot of heirloom peas and beans. And where do you suppose we got the seeds from? Well how about Charlies Fruit Market on the corner of Stafford Rd and South Pine Rd? Charlies sells lots of dried peas and beans and they’re more or less what you’d call ‘planting ready’. I just took some out of the packets before using them to cook with. The ones I took out got soaked overnight then pushed into the very lightly forked over soil to grow. A few trellises pyramids out of bamboo stakes held together with a cable tie and they’re already to grow and produce new peas and beans.
We’re always trying out new varieties. South East Queensland weather is pretty wet and humid for beans but some grow well. We know lima beans are great to grow in the garden here. Now we’ll find out whether some of these other varieties work: Lupini beans broad beans black eye beans borlotti beans cannelli beans.
Remember if you are cooking beans they need to be soaked overnight in warm water first then drain away the water. This reduces the phytates that upset the tummy. How do you keep the water warm overnight? Well one way is to use a big plastic food thermos the type you might use to keep soup warm for a camping trip. Put the beans in it. Fill it with hot water and leave it overnight then drain the water away.
So happy growing beans. In a few months they should be ready to pick and cook. Remember beans contain protein so they are one way you can help feed yourself a balanced diet from your own garden which you can’t do on lettuce and tomatoes alone. And they also taste very nice. I’ll bring you my best lima bean recipe another day.
Transferring private debt to public (us) debt
One of the really awful things that can happen to people is to have their marriage break up. It can bring out the truly nasty in human beings.
One of the deeply nasty things that one human being can do to another in a marriage break-up is called “Sexually transmitted debt”.
The process of sexually transmitted debt is where one person typically the husband gets involved with someone other than their spouse. The marriage is over and the husband feels considerable guilt for his behaviour so quickly makes a property settlement that can be reasonable generous or fair. Then off he goes to his new romance.
Gradually he regrets the deal he gave his ex so he hatches a nasty plot. He goes back to his former spouse and declares he wants to try again. They go back to a joint property arrangement. Then he spends the next year setting up offshore accounts in his name and transfers their joint funds to them generating a big debt in their joint names. Then he leaves her again. This time there is no “fair” property settlement. Now she is legally responsible for half the debt he has set up. She is now in a major financial mess all of his making while he absconds with most of the funds.
Let’s hope this never happens to any of you. It is a scam that is happening out there in the nasty world of marriage break-up and it is something to beware of.
But something just as bad has been done to the world in the Global Financial Crisis.
It started when private financial managers generated vast sums of private toxic debt and hawked them around as investment instruments. Eventually it all went belly up in the ghastly event we know as the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. This was private toxic debt and financial houses and banks owned it.
They had made cynical investment decisions and now their chickens were coming home to roost.
It would have been an awful story and the consequences for all of us would have been tragic if it had stopped there. Just as the marriage break-up was tragic for the innocent wife. But
in the initial version the wife got to salvage something so she could make a new life.
If the financial houses and banks all went belly up we would have suffered. But we wouldn’t be laden down with debt. It was their debt.
But then a next step was taken. The banks argued that the government should bail them out and the governments did. The governments took on the debts of the banks. We took on the liability for the debts but we never made the decisions that led to the debt. Now the banks were freed up from their toxic debt and they boomed ahead. Most of them are now doing very nicely thank you.
But the global financial system is looking very rocky once again. This time governments around the world are laden down with debt and they have no-where to go to prime markets to get them working again if they go down.
We could be moving into another crisis but this time we are like the wife the second time around. We’ve been laden up with the debt that was never ours and we get to be left in pain again only this time much worse. While the banks and private financial institutions get off free.
Very very nasty indeed. We would have been better to take our very painful medicine the first time and not rescue the banks not have the cheating spouse back.
QLD’s sources of income and States versus Federal on royalties from mining
Reading about the mining industry and all the mining projects that are starting up around Australia one of the things that jumps out at you is the size of the figures the amounts of money involved. They’re always in billions of dollars and lots of billions of dollars. These are big projects lots of them and they are set to make huge profits for the companies digging up the coal or iron ore or pumping up the gas. The profits are measured in billions often hundreds of billions of dollars.
It is very easy to get excited reading this stuff. It is clearly big. But it is like the magician at the children’s show. You have your gaze mesmerised by what he is doing and you’ve completely taken your eyes off what is important. What is important is what Australia gets out of it in terms of profit what we get out of it and what Australia picks up as costs and environmental destruction.
The royalties are what Australians us get out of it. They aren’t mentioned all that often. And there is a reason they aren’t mentioned all that often. They are tiny by comparison to the profits the mining companies are making. The royalties are what the mining companies pay us for Australia’s ore that they are digging up and shipping out to make huge profits out of. The royalties they pay us are measured in millions of dollars not billions.
The one figure I managed to find this weekend right at the bottom of a long article full of billions of dollars was $500 million per year to Queensland for royalties. $500 million dollars is what we are selling out our farmlands and our small businesses and our tourist industry and our education industry as mining sends the A$ up and up.
There is another distinction we need to understand.
Royalties are paid to the State governments and they get them right up front. They don’t go to the Federal government. So the Federal government has a big interest in getting some of the profits from mining back in taxes for Australians. They get some back as company tax but the minerals resources rent tax will be where Australia gets back more of a share of the megaprofits being made from mining.
The bigger percentage that is the better.
But there is another thing we need to know about all this too.
How does Queensland make a living? How do all of us put together make a living?
Well until now with all the mining happening and some royalties coming in however pitiful the way Queensland has made a living is by what we call ‘development’.
The way Queensland has been making a living is a scheme where the people who live here already move over and share the land and the infrastructure with a torrent of new arrivals from interstate and overseas. This drives a big demand for more homes and offices and business premises and infrastructure. New land gets sold by the government to fit all the new arrivals in and the government gets fees for approvals and land taxes and the like.
Did you wonder during the great drought that nearly saw Wivenhoe Dam completely run out of water why our Premier never once called out a warning to stop any more people coming to Queensland? We were running out of water like there was no tomorrow and all of us were living under this huge threat of having no water at all yet more people were streaming into South East Queensland at 1000 per week. Is that strange or what?
We in Queensland had got ourselves in a trap where we rely on more people coming as our income but every new person who comes puts more pressure on water supply space and infrastructure and drives up the land prices our children pay to buy a home and the rates we all pay.
So mineral royalties are a blessing for the State government an alternative to trying to afford enough infrastructure for the endless torrent of new arrivals. But the mineral royalties are a pittance and in return we are allowing the mining companies to dig up and destroy our very very best farmlands and risk destroying our most precious natural asset our great underground aquifers and river systems.
We live high on the hog in Queensland but do we ever stop to think where the money comes from? It’s a Faustian deal a deal with the devil. What are we going to do about it? Let’s start asking ourselves how?