These are hard days for investors looking to earn interest on their money because official interest rates are at an all time low. Somehow central banks think the economy will be stimulated to prosperity if everyone spends, and they will do that because a little debt won’t hurt. Consequently retirees are not investing in term deposits as they once did for safety, instead they are interested in company profits. We like to see big business doing well because they pay dividends, even though we might not have direct interests in them.
The last days of this decade are informative. The financial year might not be half way through , but we can spot trends. There are too many trends the writer dislikes on day 180 of 2019.
• I do not like to see companies avoiding tax. The tax employees pay is not a company payment. I dislike it when they use this an excuse/answer.
“Our company is heavily invested in the economy because we provide thousands of jobs.” This does not wash with me.
• I do not like it when companies avoid paying full wages. Companies underpaying employers this year would fill a page. (The employment legislation may be difficult to navigate but the number of workers overpaid would not cover a line, therefore something does not wash.
• I do not like it when the companies showing most growth are new companies in such smelly industries as pay-day loans, artificial intelligence, or long time companies like Aristocrat Leisure (gambling) or Domino’s Pizza (wage theft,)
• I do not like it when the board pays the CEO more than 250 times the average country wage (Qantas). Each man gets 168 hours a week. Reducing the workforce does not take brilliance. Real brilliance is required to build people, and that build business health.
• I do not like it company boards put the interests of shareholders before ethics. A principled life starts with the ethics. Boards of Banks, Gambling companies, ………… have been found wanting in the last six months. The reputation of a company is unavoidably linked to its directors
• I do not like it when multinational companies falsely invoice local entities to avoid tax. (Everywhere).
• I do not approve of companies using casualisation of the work force to reduce obligation to workers. If they only work on a casual basis they work for you.
Our government does not escape criticism.
This government is linked in its unfair distribution of water.
This government is linked to being Lassize faire with mining companies; oil, gas, minerals, coal. Gold. The resources exploited are once only sales yet the miners are excused from royalty payments while in establishment.
This is the wealth for which we are famous. The government has no plan to preserve the real wealth for future generations.
In order to deliver a surplus government is withholding payment to legitimate recipients at every turn. It could stimulate the economy with quantitate easing yet it refuses
This government has no plans for the environmental safety – including its flora and fauna.
We are open for business to anyone with the other capital because the government takes no interest in who owns what under AU $200 million.
• I do not like it when under employed people are considered to be working if they clock an hour a week at a job. In every effective way they are unemployed.
We can do our bit. In fact we must do more.
The last six months have been dry across the country. Our farmers have done it tough. Meat, grain, vegetables, farm produce of all kinds are diminished. Farm incomes are down. The real costs are being avoided by the public because our supermarkets buy from the cheapest supplier.
As purchasers we have a responsibility to our countrymen. Where ever it is feasible to by local produce we should. In the past six months many of the brands we used to buy have been purchased by off shore owners. It does not improve our economy to help boost the wealth of foreign countries. (I understand our producers, our sons and daughters are employed to make these products but I see this as only temporary. Past experience shows off shore owners like the brand they do not care how, or where it is made. )
I have written this because I have grand children. I want them to know what I have witnessed in the last six months does not look good for them and I disapprove.
If you agree please let me know. If you disagree with me please comment and I can grow in wisdom. As my writing is with the prejudice of ignorance of old age I need your help. . Please bring me up to speed where you see the chance.
It is a beautiful summer day. Those who can are holidaying near the sea. The waves break gently on the shore, and children play in the shallows. In the hinterland smoke fills the air and the ground is on fire. This is the landscape of my country. As the decade ends we have had five temperature breaking days this month.
Some say this is climate change. Others point to former records set in 1896. At that time hundreds of people died in the extreme heat. Then no one talked of global warming and that is one reason given for their skepticism today. The climate always changes.
The weather bureau agrees many parts of the country did record extraordinary temperatures but this early summer is hotter. They argue the gauges were not uniform until recently. In times past thermometers were measured where they sat. Some might well have been read in direct sunlight and those would indeed be wrong. Why, in the late 1950s we had a week of days over 37 degrees. Or so the daily papers recorded. It was hot but it was hot when we expected it to be hot. This year it is hot earlier than expected.
The fact is wherever you live- the climate in your corner of the globe is not as you expect. It is drier. It is hotter, it is colder. Colder? Yes colder., and it is wetter. Extremes of weather is what we have been told to expect for thirty years. Storms will be fiercer. Droughts will be longer. In a world changing because of human living patterns.
This seems to agree with what I learned in my course in sustainability and am reading in the press. No corner of the globe seem immune. Sea ice has melted in the Arctic. In Antartica great slabs of permanent ice have broken free of the continent. Permafrost is melting and ruining road works in North America. Floods have caused havoc across the globe. Venice is used to a high water event once a year. Now it is happening more frequently. Just as frequently sea erosion is washing away once stable shorelines.
It is creatures that seem to be the worst effected at this point. Animals are becoming extinct before their life patterns are reasonably understood. You might care to add to the list of common creatures that seem to be paying the price of much needed human intervention. I can think of bees, frogs, birds, that seem to be threatened with destruction. The thing is miniature creatures seem to suffer without causing alarm at first. It is only when crops are not germinating as they should we sit up and notice.
We do notice. We notice when food costs soar. We notice when the dishes we like need ingredients in short supply. We notice when whole nations cannot grow their basic foods and the die in terrible famines, or the flee their homelands as refugees. We notice but we do not fight for anything until it is at our door.
What can we do? Most of us prefer to do nothing. Some of us are concerned enough to chain themselves, in protest, to immovable objects. Some understand and they try to change government policies. Recently 190 nations met in Madrid to discuss the subject but like Paris and Kyoto nothing was decided.
The countries worked quickly to reset the refrigeration hydrocarbon gasses that caused the rapid damage. This time in almost every country there a self interest groups of fossil fuel influence holding back the needs of their constituents. You are one. Where do you sit? My reason for writing is a self interest one. I want my grandchild to understand I do not agree with the policies of my government that put the interests of today’s big business before the lives of populations yet to be born. I will go further. I think it is irresponsible not to act on the best scientific advice available to this generation.
I read and I reread what I have written and every time I post. I miss the most obvious errors for this I apologise.
Today I share this review as a response to my last entry.
Inshore Cassandra 