Spotlight on Australia

Tales of the unexpected?

The G20  meeting in Brisbane  was followed by informal visits to Sydney. Rock star status was accorded to Indian PM Modi ( more popular than Gandhi apparently but that's easy as India's population has grown a zillion times after the Raj downed his G & T , tearfully sailing out of Bombay some 67 years ago) and last but not least,  photo opportunities with cuddly Koalas. Tony and Boris must have made up as they fondled their marsupials together for the Press. No clean shirtfronts there.

Tony Abbott's opening speech, according to some weightier members of the Press, was a doozy, leaving the audience to pick their teeth and glance furtively at their watches as the wonders of the coalition's policies were splashed cross the broad canvas of everything and anything that moved. 

Obama had Brisbane students swooning in their Nikes while,for afters , China and the U.S,  vowed to put the dampeners on pollution. Xi Jinping and Boris were obliquely slapped on the wrist by David
Cameron; the criticism sunk like a pair of soggy socks in the wash. Ebola was in there somewhere. From an appeal point of view the Koalas blitzed ém. 

Now it's all over with Everybody lurvs Orstrayleeyah ,there's a cluster of trade agreements , maybe free Yoga classes in India,  (spare Boeing parts from Russia?) from which benefits will accrue ......when? China managed to put a bit of a lever under Canberra to loosen U,S. Australian ties.They don't give up. 

Talk about the unexpected? Not really.

What's around the corner

Expect the unexpected.

The dragon depicted below doesn't have any wings, As a little dragon he backed into a deli slicer and lost both flaps. Hence for him the immediate danger is what he can't see and that is namely, the unexpected.

This really applied to negative events like being faced with a sudden bill or a twist of fate which knocks you off your feet.

Talking of unexpected,  thirty years ago, or more, a highly intelligent and close relative marveled at the advent of the computer but wondered what one could do with it. T

he internet has been an extraordinary development but it has also revealed the weirdos out there.

Today I received an email  from someone purporting to be a U.S.$50 million lottery winner who wished to share his good fortune with me having picked my email at random. He proposed to gift US$1 million to my account out of the goodness of his heart provided I forwarded details etc etc. Yeah, right. Now that was unexpected .

Weather or not.......

...we change for the inevitable?

A bit of a bombshell for Mr. Abbott at the APEC meeting this week ; an agreement in principle between the U.S. and China to work seriously towards realistic target emissions. It may not work but it brings into focus the issue that has been confronting scientists for some years, namely global warming and the changes that it foreshadows in our environment. 

Where to now? Will Australia concede there is a problem? (Vladimir is also very quiet..he's been preoccupied with sending covert submarine missions as well as naval shenanigans near Australian territorial waters. )

Dream on....

A local politician (not someone I admire) recently stated that if at first you don't succeed , just forget about it. 

Personally I find that rather sad. Without dreams where would we be? In many cases possibly a great deal wealthier.

This is something that Americans are very good at. Martin Luther King had a dream which eventuated to some extent but only some time after his death. They are great believers in following the dream in striving to achieve the impossible. Does it work.? Probably not in the majority of cases.

Indian Prime Minister Modi has a dream that Yoga resume its place in Indian culture and society and he has appointed a minister in his newly formed cabinet to be I/C Yoga. He's got something like 66 new ministers. 66 Lotus positions at a Governmental meeting would be something to behold.

Few of us are lucky enough to get to the goals we set ourselves because life, like voters , is  fickle. However, everything is relative, especially in India where everybody is related to everybody and a farewell at Heathrow resembles a miniature New Delhi without the rickshaws. Funny lot. On the one hand so spiritual and mystical and on the other really very materialistic. Anybody seen young middle class Indian ladies shopping? It's scary.

A person one may consider to be a drone may be extremely content in his or her humdrum existence.Yet another who avoids stress and worry could well be at peace with the world and live to a ripe old age. It doesn't mean they have not had dreams but they've faded with age; sometimes dreams turn into nightmares.

Waffle,waffle.....there's so much more but you'd be bored to tears.

And when he was halfway in he was....

neither in nor out...

It's been a while coming but it seems as if the Brits are not happy with the EU. Of course, there was always the deep rooted suspicion of "foreigners" eg those who live across the Channel. It is hard for them to accept the concept of a system that operates fairly smoothly without class. Unfortunately for Mother England, class still exists, maybe not as pronounced as previously but still prevalent.

Now the British have developed a taste for French wine, French cheese, German cars and spaghetti but that's enough of a good thing. The pretty little houses en Provence and in Espana are also all part of the deal but again, enough's enough. The wealthy ones are sitting pretty. Now is the time to get serious.

Unfortunately for the "Continentals" the British also also fairly rigid in their concept of rules and how things ought to be done. Hence the finger pointing at the "PIGS" ( Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) whose system of book-keeping is somewhat akin to gambling. The Germans and Dutch are pretty rigid but somehow manage to function without treating blue or white collar workers as troublemakers. There's a gap as wide as grandma's bloomers between the divisive Anglo Saxon philosophy and the more inclusive European system.

Having narrowly survived the eventuality of Scotland leaving the Union, the UK is now paying the price of many wealthy nations with refugees ,both economic and political,  flooding their shores. It's compounded by the old colonial outposts now wanting a piece of the action and repayment for wealth extracted. 

When voting regarding EU membership comes along who knows what will happen?. In the meantime the UK is taking a much harder line with refugees , much to the chagrin of the EU.