How we listen to music in 2022

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Image: Technology exists to convert a cassette to MP3 – have we had a copyright ruling on that?

This week I decided to reflect on the many ways we can listen to music in this digital age. We’ve come a long way since the first recording etched on to a wax cylinder in 1860. In just 50 years, the mainstream way of listening to music has moved from vinyl LPs to cassettes to CDs and now to online streaming. It’s been quite an evolution.

This FOMM was inspired by a frustrating search for an album by Californian bluegrass singer AJ Lee and her band, Blue Summit. I was introduced to AJ at U3A Warwick’s Music Show, where presenters curate a list of YouTube clips and provide background on the tracks. This particular song was performed by the Brothers Comatose and AJ Lee, a splendid interpretation of Neil Young’s Harvest Moon.

On Monday I started packing for a week away in the caravan, part of it at the best music festival in Queensland, Neurum Creek Festival. This one has been running for 16 years at the Neurum Creek Bush Retreat, which is about 12 kms from Woodford. In preparing and packing, I decided to see if I could load new music on my Ipod, which is no longer supported by Apple. The problem is that as I now longer use ITunes, the music player I use can’t ‘talk’ to the Ipod. Mr Shiraz sent me a link to a piece of software that will mimic ITunes so you can ‘sync’ your music collection with an Ipod, a portable music player invented by Apple in 2001. Since Apple stopped supporting Ipods, many users have opted to put them in a drawer and move on. One alternative is to buy a cheap mobile phone, add a large storage card and use it as a personal music player.

I could tell how far CDs had dropped in popularity when looking to buy AJ Lee’s 2021 album, I’ll Come Back. I decided not to download it on Spotify, as the artists are paid a trifling amount when we listen to their music on that platform.

Subsequent searches found the album on streaming services, which was not what I wanted. I went direct to AJ Lee’s website and the only option was to purchase a physical CD and wait however many weeks or months it takes to arrive from the US. Then I tried Bandcamp (where you will find our music). Success, the album was there. I duly downloaded the album and now can listen to it on my computer, my phone and, once I get around to it, burn a CD for my ‘new’ 5-CD changer.

The CD player failed some months ago and I eventually established that the model was obsolete and a replacement laser could not be found. I opted for a refurbished model from a seller on Ebay. It’s a quality Sony deck and, so far, is working perfectly.

Before I went into hospital for a procedure in late August, I spent a day (dusting) and alphabetising our CD collection (450-plus). I told She Who Loves Order in her Life I had done this ‘so if I cark it, at least you’ll know the CDs are in A-Z and not filed according to ‘mood’.

As audiophiles will tell you, CD music is superior to cassette but inferior to vinyl, because the digital sound is compressed.

Vinyl music played on top line analogue systems always sounds better than both CDs and the alternative (playing or streaming MP3 quality tracks). The cassette, with its annoying hiss and tendency to become snarled in the player, is a long last.

Audio cassettes were invented by a Dutch company (Philips) and adopted by mainstream America in the mid-60s. My memory of cassettes is that people would borrow someone else’s tape and dub a cassette to play in the car. This practice was and still is illegal, even if retailers happily sold boxes of blank cassettes and high-end twin cassette decks on which one could dub to a blank tape. (The last piece of music technology I actually understood.  Ed.)

Most of us have a couple of shoeboxes in the cupboard full of cassettes – legitimate ones bought in music stores, or bootleg copies. The difficulty now is that, for most people, their means of playing cassettes has evaporated. My tape deck worked for about 20 years. One deck stopped working and then the sound quality became so poor we decided to switch to another medium.

I did a straw poll among people of my vintage to establish how they listen to music (if they listen to music at all). Most said they no longer had a CD player (it either died or they found the business of swapping them over tedious). Most late model cars no longer come with a CD player, so that accelerated the decline in popularity.

Some people opt for a WIFI speaker through which they can stream music from YouTube or Spotify. How this works is you turn the gadget on and say in a loud, clear voice: “OK Google, play The Goodwills.” There is a pause, a whirring sound and a disembodied voice says: “OK, playing DJ Goodwill.”

Others turn on their smart TV and then search for music videos on YouTube. Depending on your cinema surround sound system (if you have one), the sound quality is OK. The database of video clips is apparently bottomless, but the quality is uneven.

According to Gizmodo’s history of the compact disc, the first commercial CDs were available in Australia in late 1982 (about 150 titles). This was a few years before we moved to Brisbane and bought a Technics stereo system for around $1,500 (it was on sale). We started a CD collection then and even today, I prefer a CD to any other format.

What is hard to stomach is knowing I paid $25 to $30 each and sometimes more for an imported disc. Today you can go to a charity shop and buy CDs for coins. It’s not about money, though. Our CD collection is special in that at least 100 CDs were given to us either as a gift or as a swap (one of ours for one of theirs) by musicians we know.

The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) said streaming accounted for 86% of $565.8 million music sales in Australia in 2021. Over the same period, physical music sales dropped from $100.5 million to $56.1 million. Vinyl albums led the way at $29.7 million, compared with $24.9 million for CD albums.

A Roy Morgan research report in 2020 said 12.7 million Australians were using a streaming service. Spotify is the clear market leader with 8m customers, almost double what it was in 2017. YouTube Music is next with 4.4m users in Australia.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) concurs, saying 61% of Australians used a streaming service in June 2020, up from 48% in 2019. As you’d expect, 88% of the 18-34 age group used music streaming services. Surprisingly (well, I’m surprised), the biggest growth in online music streaming was the 55-64 cohort (from 47% to 59%), 65-75 (30% to 44%) and the over-70s (17% to 26%).

I confess I’m part of that trend, although this weekend it’s all about live music, coffee and a CD shop – the way it should be.

Harping on about the arts

The Morrison government’s $200m RISE grants scheme for the arts helped many arts organisations and individuals revive their careers after the Covid hiatius. According to the Opposition, there’s still $20 million in the fund not yet distributed.

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The Brisbane Philharmonic strings with Emily Granger (harp) and Jonathan Henderson (flute). Photo by John Connolly.

In the aftermath of ‘Albo’s first 100 days,’ it could be constructive to talk about one good thing the previous Federal government did – creating the RISE scheme for the Arts.

The $200 million RISE (Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand) grants scheme was designed to arrest the declining financial health of arts organisations and creative individuals. The Covid-19 stimulus program was welcomed by the arts community as organisations large and small shared in the bounty.

We were witness to the fruits of one such grant application by the Brisbane Philharmonic Orchestra. The BPO has been touring regional towns with its newly acquired Salzedo concert harp. This $75,000 instrument looks and sounds gorgeous. The BPO toured a string quintet with two soloists – Emily Granger (harp) and Jonathan Henderson (flute). This ensemble played for 110 people at Warwick Town Hall last Saturday. Apart from the interesting and varied programme (Ralph Vaughan Williams, Mozart, Schoenberg, Faure), this was an occasion for ‘show and tell’.

Audience members were invited to come up to the stage after the concert and inspect the concert harp close up. BPO director John Connolly told the audience the custom-made concert harp used up a lot of the grant the orchestra received last year. He briefly explained the complexity of the instrument, built from maple and spruce and invited the audience to come up and inspect it after the concert.

The BPO’s application brief was to acquire this instrument and then take it on tour to places where people have probably never seen a concert harp. On this tour, the ensemble played at Pomona, Maryborough, Warwick, Toowoomba and Brisbane.

The RISE Fund was established to support the arts and entertainment sector to re-activate after two years of Covid disruption. The program offered arts and entertainment sector organisations assistance in the presentation of cultural and creative projects. The funding of activities and events was aimed at rebuilding confidence amongst investors, producers and consumers (hate that word.Ed).

The first RISE grants were issued in December 2020 in support of artists and organisations affected by COVID-19. The aim was to fund the delivery and presentation of activities across all art forms to audiences across Australia. Projects aimed at audiences in outer metropolitan, regional and remote areas were taken into account, as were projects that involved tours and use of local regional services and support acts.

The grant scheme provided $200 million over 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 to assist the financial viability of arts organisations. Among the first grants awarded was $1 million to the Byron Bay Blues Festival and $1.46 million to Woodfordia for its smaller-scale Bushtime festival.

Queensland grant recipients included Kate Miller-Heidke and her husband and musical partner Keir Nuttall. The pair, known for ‘Muriel’s Wedding – the Musical’, received a $200,000 grant to produce a new musical, Bananaland. QMusic, the umbrella organisation that represents musicians in Queensland, was another grant recipient.The Granite Belt Art and Craft Trail received $80,000 to help present a three-day showcase of artists and artisans around the region. Some grant awards have attracted criticism, however (see footnote).

In what one might term its ‘death throes’, the Morrison government allocated a further $20 million to the scheme in March this year. Just this week Opposition Shadow spokesman for the Arts Paul Fletcher took aim at Arts Minister Tony Burke for failing to distribute the last batch of funds. I reached out to Mr Burke’s office to ask (a) has the money had been allocated and (b) did this Labor government intend to extend or supplement the scheme.

Citizen journalists don’t often get a response to approaches like this. We make do with public statements, published details of grant schemes and quoting other publications. In this instance, given there was no response from Mr Burke’s office, we’ll let the Opposition have a free kick.

Fletcher took the chance to turn Albo’s headline into ‘100 days of lost opportunities for the Arts’.

“Since the election, Minister for the Arts Tony Burke has repeatedly failed to confirm $20 million in funding from the last round of the (RISE) program,” Mr Fletcher said in a statement.

“The RISE fund helped to create over 213,000 job opportunities across Australia by assisting the arts and entertainment sector re-establish itself post-pandemic,” he added.

“In recognising arts and entertainment as one of our hardest hit sectors during the pandemic, the Coalition Government extended the RISE program as part of the 2022-23 Budget.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Anthony (Albo) Albanese spent much of the week explaining what he and his government had achieved in its first 100 days. A lot of what was said had been said before – diplomatic forays into the Pacific, the mercy dash to Ukraine, the Quad meeting, mending fences with France and all that. There was the commitment to reducing the impact of climate change, and, if you did not know, the quiet scrapping of the cashless debit card previously imposed on some welfare recipients.

As the Canberra Times pointed out, the first 100 days was not without its challenges. The incoming Labor government was met by a perfect storm – rising interest rates together with high inflation and the subsequent higher prices at the petrol pump and supermarket checkout. Mr Albanese is already flagging budget measures in October to tackle soaring energy prices.

All up, it seems ‘Albo’ is still enjoying a honeymoon, although some of the Opposition’s gainsaying is gaining traction. I’m fairly sure that allowing ex-basketball giant Shaq O’Neill to make a surprise visit to the PM was what young people would call a ‘fail’. The story was that Shaq, a black man from the US, was lending his support to Albo’s campaign for recognition of indigenous Australians. Shaq is these days maybe better known for betting ads than his time with the LA Lakers. Besides, he made the PM look small, and we can’t have that.

It will indeed be interesting to see what kind of funding Albo and his team direct to the arts and entertainment sector. It would be great if organisations like the BPO or talented individuals like Keir and Kate could depend on more of the same. Covid-19 has not gone away and there are still many challenges facing those providing live entertainment.

Anyway, we thought the Brisbane Philharmonic Orchestra’s travelling concert at $20 concession was the bargain of the year. The BPO’s grant application proposed just such a concert series. The aim was a regional tour built around the acquisition of a new Concert Harp. The $102,000 grant was released in July last year. It shows how long it can take for an arts group to plan for and execute a tour like this. As with most arts presentations, the door take was clearly not going to cover tour costs, not to mention wages.

The BPO is Brisbane’s leading community orchestra with up to 200 musicians a year performing a variety of orchestral music.  It is sustained by donations, sponsorship and grants.

We looked around Warwick’s beautiful town hall, built in 1887, and were astonished by how many faces we recognised. We’ve only been here two years or so, but somehow seem to have gravitated to the side of town that loves a bit of culture. I hear the famous Birralee children’s choir is coming here later this month. You might have even read it here first.

Today’s FOMM is brought to you by the letter P for patronage. There should be more of it.

Footnote: The RISE scheme has its critics

Celebrating Multicultural Australia

Australian Bureau of Statistics chart shows growth in population of people born elsewhere since the mid-1940s

Australia is more culturally diverse than ever, according to the first results from the 2021 Census. Almost half our population of 25.76 million people have at least one parent born overseas. Almost a quarter of Australians (24.8%) speak a language other than English at home. Just over a quarter (27.6%) report being born overseas (Ed: and that includes him and me – Scotland and Canada’s loss is our gain, we modestly reckon).

In the five years since the last Census, India has become the second-most common overseas country of birth, shifting New Zealand and China down the list. The above chart from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows the shifting demographic.

Dr Sukhmani Khorana, Senior Research Fellow, Western Sydney University, says the growing number of first-generation migrants means Australians’ ancestry will change significantly over the next decade.

“Australia will continue to change and look different, and we must ensure our institutions and policies reflect this,” Dr Khorana wrote in The Conversation.

“That work, by governments and policy makers, should begin now so they can gain trust and maximise the belonging of these communities. Research shows feelings of belonging lead to better socio-economic outcomes”.

Dr Khorana believes there would have been substantially more immigration were it not for the COVID pandemic with its restrictions and lock-downs.

Dr Khorana highlights an important item from the Census data:

  • the number of people who are either born overseas or have a parent born overseas is greater than half (13.26 million people or 51.5%).

The data shows Australia is as multicultural or even more so than countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Canada’s latest Census (2016) showed that 21.9% of people were immigrants, led by people from South Asia. Similarly, data from the UK’s 2018 Census showed that 14% of the UK population was from a minority ethnic background. In the city of London, this figure was 40%.

Dr Khorana, who conducts research for migrant and refugee-focused organisations in Western Sydney, says Australia would have received more migrants had it not been for the COVID pandemic, which shut borders from early 2020.

Census data shows the pandemic led to an 80% decrease in the number of overseas visitors, which affected the tourism, hospitality and higher education sectors of the economy.

We also received fewer relatives of overseas-born Australians, for example on family-sponsored visas.

Our local refugee and migrant network organised an event in Warwick last Sunday. Visiting chefs prepared samples of ethnic food from five different countries. There was also music and dancing. About 60 adults and children showed up at St Mark’s Hall including two Hazara Afghan families wearing traditional dress.

Southern Downs Regional Council Mayor Vic Pennisi attended the event and made a short speech. Italian-born Cr Pennisi related his arrival in Australia as a child “with not one word of English”. He grew up in Stanthorpe in a time he acknowledged was not as friendly towards ethnic minorities as Australia is now.

“I left school after Grade 10 and now I’m Mayor of the Southern Downs Regional Council and only in a country like Australia could you do that.”

The event, ‘A Taste of the Southern Downs’, was open to the public, with cooking demonstrations and a chance to sample dishes from South Korea, China, The Philippines, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Southern Downs Refugee and Migrant Network organized the event with the support of a grant from the Queensland Government and sponsorship from Acciona’s McIntyre Wind Farm Project.

Our contribution to the event was to set up our PA, make a multi-cultural music play list and present a short set of Australian folk songs. Our theme was the Anglo-Saxon immigrant experience. She Who Still Has a Canadian Accent sung ‘Un Canadien Errant’, a traditional French language song about a young Canadian exile forced to leave Quebec.

We learned two new songs, Farewell to old England and The Shores of Botany Bay, and performed my immigration story, Rangitiki.

Earlier, we listened to guest speakers who impressed me with their command of English language. Even though most grew up in Australia, if you are from Asia, knowing what ‘cooking from scratch’ means is quite impressive stuff. Few of us could translate this to any of the many Asian dialects!

Likewise, a Hazara Afghan and friend of our group, related his story coming from Afghanistan as an unaccompanied minor in 2012. Now a confident young man with a good command of English, he gave some insights into the sacrifices refugees make when forced to flee their home countries. After a decade in Australia, he has only recently been re-united with his family.

Donations were raised for a Melbourne group, Hazara Women for Change. This group aims to support the ongoing education of Afghan women. Afghanistan’s rulers, the Taliban, have shut down schools and forbid women from receiving an education. That’s the least of the worries for persecuted minorities like the Hazara trying to survive within Afghanistan.

The United Nations recently released a report voicing concern over the Taliban authorities’ carrying out human rights violations with impunity. This included extra-judicial killings of individuals accused of affiliation with armed groups, but also cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishments, and excessive use of force by Taliban officials.

The report documented a total of 237 extra-judicial killings. Most of them (160), targeted former members of the Afghan military and government.

No matter how uncertain their future may be as refugees in Australia, Afghan citizens who were evacuated last August will be grateful to be here, although lamenting those family members left behind.

I had to do some digging to establish the 2021 population of people born in Afghanistan. As you might expect, given the upheaval in that country since the last Census, the Afghan population here has grown from 46,800 in 2016 to 67,030 in mid-2021. And that was before the Taliban came back and some 4,100 people with Australian visas were evacuated to this country, many of them Afghans. For perspective, there are about eight million Hazaras living in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan.

While Australia is a multi-cultural country, the population is still dominated by English-speaking people who were either born here or came from countries where English is the first language.

The top five most common places of birth (outside Australia) are led by England (468,465), India (362,187), New Zealand (267,327), China (239,951) and the Philippines (113,035), followed by Vietnam, South Africa, Italy and Malaysia. People who ticked the ‘born elsewhere’ box numbered 364,949 (includes countries not identified individually by the respondent and people born at sea).

People from the UK still rank among the top five sources of ancestry including English (33%), Irish (9.5%) and Scottish (8.6%).

In his election campaign in May, then Opposition leader Anthony Albanese said becoming prime minister with his Italian surname would proves “you can do anything in this country”.

“We’re a diverse country, and the fact that I have a non-Anglo-Celtic name … I think it sends a message out there hopefully to multi-cultural Australia that you can achieve anything in this country,” he said after being elected in May.

Indeed. We also have a Senate leader named Wong.

It wasn’t always like that.

FOMM back pages (2018)

Multiculturalism under siege

 

The People’s Bank and Privatisation

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Bank of Bob

My first reaction to the news that the Commonwealth Bank had made a $9.67 billion profit was a typical champagne socialist rant.

“What social justice reforms could we achieve with that kind of money?” I fumed (something non-smokers rarely do). For perspective, CommBank’s profit is more than double the $4 billion allocated to the Federal Media, Arts and Sporting industries in the March budget.

It’s also twice the amount the Federal Government allocated to affordable housing in the same Budget. What I’m implying by these comparisons will matter not a jot to most of CommBank’s 800,000 shareholders. They are the ones who benefit most from the bank’s 4% dividend and its unrelenting capital growth.

If you’d accumulated 10,000 shares in the 1990s you’d be a millionaire now on that shareholding alone.

Almost all fund managers and investment advisers will tell you everyone should have at least one and preferably two major banks in their portfolios. Generous franked dividends, seemingly endless capital growth and ‘government-guaranteed-too-big-to-fail status’: reasons enough for most. All of the banks indulge in risky derivatives and hedge fund trading and support organisations that ethical investors avoid (mining, oil and gas, alcohol, tobacco, arms, gambling to name a few). But there’s no law against it.

Let’s climb into the DeLorean then and return not to the future but the past – 1991, an era that gave us “the recession we had to have” and which ushered in a cavalcade of high-profile privatisations. Great Scott, Marty!

The Hawke/Keating Labor governments decided to offer government-owned institutions to the private investment market. CommBank, Telstra, the Commonwealth Serum Laboratory (CSL) and what we now know as Australia Post were among the biggest. At the time, the Commonwealth Bank was listed on the Australian share market and those who got in on the public float bought shares at an issue price of $5.40.

Last time I looked, CBA shares were trading at $100 and they have been as high as $110 in the past 12 months. The most recent dividend was $2.10, a yield of 4%, fully franked, which means investors get a tax rebate.

CommBank’s website offers a large slice of the institution’s history, from establishment in 1912 to present day. It’s a big number to get your head around, but what was once the People’s Bank has a market capitalisation of $172.64 billion. It employs 52,000 people.

Like all four of major banks (and some smaller ones) CommBank has not escaped scandal and opprobrium.

The Hayne Royal Commission into the banking sector in 2017 found widespread failures of governance and compliance in banks and other financial institutions. These lapses led to failures to detect and address misconduct, failures to report misconduct to the regulators in a timely manner, or even failing to report it at all.

Last year CommBank exited the discredited financial advice business, a sector which attracted a lot of the criticism within the banking inquiry.

The Australian Financial Review’s ‘wealth editor’ Alek Vicovich reported in October 2021 that CBA was closing down the last of its financial advice operations. CBA had previously operated its own financial planning subsidiary, Commonwealth Financial Planning, which employed full-time advisory and call centre staff. Other banks operated under the ‘dealer group’ model, which meant licensing self-employed companies to give advice. .

During the financial scandal-plagued 1980s, CommBank, like many others, lent money to entrepreneurs it should have been keeping a better eye on. As is always the case, large losses from bad loans are ‘written down’ and disappear forever from the balance sheet. Investigative financial journalist Michael West has written reams on the banking sector if you want to go down that particular rabbit hole.

The curious thing about a bank is that in its raw form it is simply a vault where customers keep their money. In the pre-privatisation era, the bank paid its customers interest on the money it safeguarded for them. Not a generous amount, mind you, but enough for generations to learn the value of thrift and establish savings habits. Then came privatisation. The bank still paid interest (as it also charged interest to customers who borrowed money to buy a house or build a business). Along the way (the Reserve Bank started keeping track of it in 1997), banks started charging a fee for service. In 2021 the total fees charged to household customers by all banks exceeded $1 billion.

As the RBA says, privatisation in Australia started in earnest with the sale of the first tranche of the Commonwealth Bank in 1991.

“The factor supporting its privatisation was the newly introduced capital adequacy guidelines for the banking industry. These meant that expansion by the bank would require increases in its equity base, which in turn would probably involve continuing calls on the Commonwealth budget.”

Public Trading Enterprises (PTEs), have been sold at both the State and Federal levels of Government in Australia. Sales since 1990 of former Commonwealth assets totalled about $30 billion (including the first stage of the Telstra privatisation). State Government sell-offs raised a similar amount.

It’s a bit bewildering when you consider that this rampant capitalism was ushered in by a Federal Labor government and was oft-repeated at a State level, by Labor and Tory-led governments alike.

The market success of the Commonwealth Bank was replicated and then outdone by the public sale of the Commonwealth Serum Laboratory. In 2020, economist and prolific blogger Professor John Quiggin aired the latest instalment of what he calls “The strange case of CSL – paying for what we used to own”.

Prof Quiggin makes the point that the Federal Government was about to shell out more than $1 billion to a company it used to own. The deal with a CSL subsidiary, Seqeris, involved building a new vaccine manufacturing plant in Melbourne to produce vaccines for influenza and Q Fever, as well as anti-venenes for snake and spider bites. (It would have been kind of handy to have a government entity researching a vaccine for Covid, wouldn’t it? Ed.)

When the Keating Government privatised Commonwealth Serum Laboratories in 1994, the share price of $2.30 was a ‘spectacular bargain’, Prof Quiggin wrote. Investors got their money back 500 times over. That beat even the Commonwealth Bank float, where investors got about 50 times their money back.

The reason the price was so low was, in part, that CSL was not a household name. Prof Quiggin and Independent Australia colleague Clive Hamilton investigated this float, concluding it was “one of the worst privatisations entered into by the government”.

Socialist rhetoric aside (not that it’s a bad thing), those who bought CSL shares at $2.30 and acquired more as the price improved are now sitting on a pharmaceutical gold mine. The shares are currently worth $295 and earlier this year almost cracked $320. CSL pays a paltry dividend (0.90% yield) but I doubt it would bother anyone who bought 2000 CSL shares at $2.30 (now worth about $220,000).

There you have it, dear reader, a brief time travel experience back to the heady days of privatisations, done so governments could reduce debt and avoid future financial liability.

I clearly recall banking sixpence a week (half my pocket money), clutching my passbook as if it was a passport to the future. Maybe you had one too.

Disclaimer: The author is a customer of on-line broker Commsec, a CommBank subsidiary, from which a lot of the research was derived.

 

 

 

How many bloggers to change a lightbulb?

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Image by Tanja-Denise Schantz www.pixabay.com

The question should be – is FOMM a blog, a topical weekly essay, Citizen journalism or the random musings of a flawed human being who craves attention?

When posting it on the WordPress website, I am reminded that FOMM is not a conventional blog. It’s those endless reminders from the SEO plug-in. For those who have no idea what that means, Search Engine Optimisation is the key to more hits and making it further up the tree of Google rankings. SEO is a nag machine – you already used this keyword – don’t do that. Almost every week it gives my screed a low score for readability. You reckon?

If you are engaged to write short, entertaining blog posts for a company, SEO is essential. If you are being asked to post 10 to 20 times a week you need SEO to penetrate the on-line miasma of ‘Content’.

The way I was brought up, content meant happy with your lot in life. What it means in blog marketing terms is to write entertainingly and splatter keywords throughout your Content. The more times you say ‘widget’ when writing about a widget the higher you will be ranked by Google’s search engines. It’s an insane marketplace.

There are 600 million blogs and 1.7 billion websites out there. They write about anything from Taiwan’s right to independence from China to why the bristles always fall out of shaving brushes. This is not counting the untold numbers of communiques from people who bypass the whole process and just send an email to a list of readers.

Joy, an environmental activist, starting emailing friends about five years ago when the Adani coal project and climate change deniers were unfortunate bedfellows. Joy tells me her missives are sometimes known by readers as ‘Joy’s blog’.

Joe Dolce, who wrote the novelty song ‘Shaddup Your Face’, wrote a weekly letter for years. I know this because a friend shared one of his long, eccentric emails with me and I subscribed.

Famous songwriter Eric Bogle writes a kind of a blog which he simply puts out there on his Facebook page. Sometimes they are, as he’ll say, grumpy old man rants. Other times, Bogle writes with great sensitivity and hits a nerve the way his best songs do.

This is the goal of bloggers – to grab the reader’s attention and hold it to the last word, Alluring headlines have their role to play and I must confess this is not my strong point as a writer. My strength (if indeed I have one) is that I post every Friday, no matter what else is going on in our lives (even on holidays, says ED, somewhat testily).

Daffodil-loving Ange is what I’d call a sporadic blog writer – the best of hers are when she and hubby hit the road and share the trials and travails and lovely images of their travel. I think they are still missing luggage from a trip to the Red Heart (but the daffies are out). My favourite Ange quote comes from a late 2021 Australian road trip.

“I’m so excited about travelling again I even ironed my Lorna Jane cargo pants.”

Australia’s oldest regular blogger Everald Compton, 90+, posts most weeks. Everald’s election-eve analysis of the state of politics and forecasts of things to come was almost 100% on the money and worth re-reading.

Everald, whose CV includes professional fundraiser, inland rail promoter and National Seniors chief executive, has a few favourite causes. In his latest blog he (again) calls for the inclusion of our indigenous people in Australia’s constitution.

Let’s be clear when distinguishing blogs and bloggers from writers who share their opinions about politics, sport, culture, indigenous affairs, climate change, the environment et al.

A blogger in the commercial sense of the word writes interesting (short) articles for companies that are trying to grow their on-line businesses. Let’s say you have a micro-business that makes useful but not indispensable tools. You’ve invented the perfect toenail cutter and employ a blogger to write enticing copy.

“The Toejam fits snugly into the palm, its laser-guided cutting blades fitting beneath the curviest toenail. Its in-built sensors sound an alarm if you are about to engage with flesh. The Toejam comes with a tiny vacuum attachment so you don’t leave toenail parings all over the bedroom floor. The wife really likes it!”

The deputy director of On-line Engagement (OE) fires back a terse email to the contract blogger.

“You only mention Toejam twice – for text of this length you should use the brand keyword at least six times. Also, the brief asked for 150 words so you are 95 words short. Try again and please, what does your wife have to do with anything?”

You can find on-line copy of this ilk designed to sell everything from green tea to rocket launchers. Yeh nah, FOMM is not a blog of that ilk.

Oberlo’s research reveals that micro blogging platform Tumbler is the king of Content, home to 488 million blogs. Its closest competitor, WordPress, hosts 78 million new posts on its platform every month. Four or sometimes five of these are mine.

Nine out of ten Content generators use blogs to sell stuff. Businesses with a blog receive 55% more visitors to their website than those that don’t. They also produce 67% more leads every month.

I decided back in 2014 if I was going to write a newspaper-style opinion column I’d need to write at least 800 words and settled on 1200. The on-line wisdom at the time was that short and fluffy works.

One of my early unsubscribers informed me: “Sorry, Bob. It’s TMTR.” I had to Google that and found it was slang for Too Much To Read.

For those who wish to write blogs that aren’t merely advertising avenues, experts like Databox now recommend writing blog posts of between 1,500 and 2000 words, as the average blog post length has increased over the past seven years from 800 to 1,200 words.

It’s hard to find an objective list of top blogs and when you do, many are mainstream media blogs, ranked by audience size rather than by content.

There are a few independent blogs in this Top 50 list from Feedly that cross over into my own list of recommended blogs (Pearls & Irritations, The Conversation, John Quiggan, Michael West).

The best blogs start as a simple on-line diary, usually generated when the writer is visiting new places. There are many great travel blogs including Nomadic Matt, The Blonde Abroad, Salt in our Hair, Little Aussie Travellers and Ange’s Around the World in 99 Days.

Last time I wrote about blogs and bloggers I mentioned the famous Swedish centenarian Dagny Carlsson, who recently died at the age of 109. She started blogging age 100 under the name Bojan after becoming “bored with retirement”. Her posts were short, to the point and often cheeky. At 106 she advised people to “stop whining and get a grip”. Dagny’s last blog post was on January 28 when she wrote: “like a cat, I have at least nine lives, but I do not know what I should use so much of life for.”

Frivolity aside, if you live in a country with a repressive regime, writing a blog is one (dangerous) way of keeping the world informed. I discovered (in 2017) the word blog in Farsi looks like this – وبلاگ. Iranians who didn’t like the way things were going in their country started وبلاگ’ing (blogging) like crazy after the 2000 crackdown on Iranian media. Although they are taking risks, rebel bloggers living in autocratic countries know their story will be picked up by libertarian journalists in democratic countries.

It’s the Internet, eh.

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Covid causing travel hesitancy

covid-travel-hesitancy
Overseas travellers 2012 to 2022 Source ABS

Some of my friends and family have decided to head off overseas (Covid be damned), and I’m just a tad jealous. Despite making plans to visit family in New Zealand in February next year, our last international adventures are now more than a decade ago. Anecdotes and photos have faded, alas.

It’s probably ‘normal’ for avid travellers to do less of it as they age, for financial and health reasons. In addition, as illustrated in this graph from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) website, the advent of Covid-19 and its aftermath certainly put paid to our collective travel ambitions.

A late 2021 study found that Australians were ‘lukewarm’ about travelling, ahead of international borders opening in February 2022.

The University of Queensland study found that only 51% of those surveyed were planning international travel, with New Zealand and Europe as key destinations. The research showed that 33% of respondents preferred to holiday in Australia, and 16% were going to stay home. Nevertheless, it has been five years since our last trip to New Zealand to visit whanua. There are new grandchildren – great-grandchildren, even. And my siblings are ageing, as am I.

As you will note from today’s chart, there has been a surge in overseas traveller numbers (inbound and outbound), but it’s a long way off the 2019 highs.

One outcome of the Covid pandemic and the lifting of travel bans is a dramatic shift in the way people plan overseas travel. A recent ABC segment found that hesitancy has changed the way Australians travel, with shorter lead times between bookings and departures. Pre-Covid, a large proportion of travellers made their own travel and accommodation bookings. But COVID-19 restrictions have led to a renewed interest in travel agencies.

Many people are nervous about what could happen should they catch Covid while travelling abroad. There are a couple of key flaws in Covid-tracking, and one is that sometimes people have Covid but don’t know it (asymptomatic). Then there are people (there would have to be some), that suspect they have Covid but keep on travelling regardless.

They might give it to a thousand other people, but as they might say in their own defence, our own chief health officer has said, it is “inevitable” most of us will catch Covid.

A friend who once swore she’d never visit Europe for all those reasons and more has just left for a six-week tour of the UK. In part, it is an organised tour and the rest independent travel. Our local friend, who we shall refer to as Zee, related a typical 2022 travel anecdote from the transit lounge in Vancouver.

“I never saw the person involved, but I gather he was a young man who had travelled via Alaska Airlines to Portland and then Air Canada to Vancouver. He had checked two bags with all his worldly possessions through to Korea.  However, apparently, they never made it on to the Air Canada flight and nobody has any idea where they are.  I know all this because he explained it in exhaustive detail several times to different people on a very long phone call. He was obviously distressed, and I felt very sorry for him. And I will never know if he ever got them back.”

 Zee has since landed at Heathrow and boarded a tour bus bound for Oxford (Ed: The Perfect Comma Tour?). After seeing stories in the media about airline passengers losing luggage, Zee opted for carry-on only. I suspect UK charity shops will be the beneficiaries of that decision.

We have all heard about or seen media coverage of people trying in vain to find lost luggage, waiting for hours in queues or being repeatedly bumped off flights. During its 18-month hiatus, the airline industry, despite attempts to revisit glory days running decades-old commercials, appears to have serious organisational issues. It comes down to a shortage of staff and trying to make old bookings systems work in a post-Covid world. Not that we are anywhere near a post-Covid world.

It may surprise you to know there are 28 countries which are not open to international visitors. They include a few countries most of us would never have on our destination bucket list. A few have onerous travel restrictions which would probably deter most visitors. Hong Kong, for example, requires you to return a negative Covid test and then go into quarantine.

A useful website (Kayak) tells us there are 163 countries that are open to visitors, and which do not require Covid-testing or quarantining. Another 33 countries require Covid testing before they will let you in and three that also require you to go into quarantine. The 28 countries that are open only to returning citizens or those under ‘special circumstances’ include China, Taiwan and Russia.

Kayak, an on-line travel agency, maintains a web page which keeps track of where you can go and what restrictions there are (if any). Despite Australia requiring all people travelling to and from the country to be double vaccinated, some countries (like Ireland) have an open-door policy. I would caution anyone with travel plans to check and double-check the entry (and exit) requirements as they change all the time.

The Kayak web page is also a one-stop place to check out how other countries are going with their vaccination rates. They range from Samoa (100%), Singapore (92%) and Germany (75%) to scarily low numbers in countries like Somalia (16%) and PNG (3.4%).

Our research into travel to New Zealand in six months’ time has thus far revealed it will be costly for comprehensive insurance. This is more to do with being 70+ than any other factor. Even though it is six months’ away, hire car companies seem to be short of vehicles. Of more pressing concern is planning ahead to avoid catching Covid and giving it to other people, namely elderly family members. We are fortunate to have an extended family in NZ who would find ways of accommodating us should we need to go into isolation (a bach at the beach, Cuz?). But it is best to make sure you factor another $1000 or so into your travel budget to cover contingencies.

As readers may have gathered over the eight years we have been communing on Fridays, I’ve done a fair bit of travelling in my youth. We also had some adventures later in life – in 2004 exchanging houses for six months with an English couple who lived in Godalming (Surrey). That was a great way to see Greece, France, Belgium, Italy, Scotland, Wales and other places, three weeks at a time then back to base to live the suburban life for a while. We visited relatives in Canada on the way over and re-visited Canada in 2010 for a family reunion. This seems to be the year for the Canadians to visit us. Brother Jon was here in May, making the most of the wet winter. Cousin Glen and his wife will be here in our Spring. They intended to travel in 2020 but we all know how that went down. There’s talk of a cousins’ reunion (probably in Seattle) in 2023. .

As readers may recall from recent essays about our trip to Tasmania, we found there’s a fair difference between taking on a 10km bush walk at 64 and 10 years on. .

Let’s see how we pull up after a month in New Zealand.

FOMM flashback

 

 

Australians buy 56 clothing items a year

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Goondiwindi cotton farmer Sam Coulton, taking part in a cotton waste recycling trial. Image from Cotton Australia

I know what you’re thinking – Crikey, someone’s buying my clothing share! That was my immediate response to a new report from the Australian Fashion Council. My trusty proof-reader, She Who Buys Quality Clothes and Keeps Them for Decades, asked: “Does that include bras and undies?”

The Clothing Data report concludes that a lot of the clothing Australians buy every year ultimately ends up in landfill. As the report shows, 62% of global clothing is made from synthetic materials. They take a long time to break down in landfill, posing a significant environmental risk. Galvanised by the approaching renewables deadline of 2030, the rag trade is driving a national stewardship scheme.

Meanwhile, Cotton Australia teamed up last year with the Queensland Government, Goondiwindi Cotton and others to start a cotton waste recycling trial. The trial diverted about two tonnes of cotton waste from landfill. The waste materials, including Emergency Services coveralls, were shredded and the material spread on a Goondiwindi cotton farm.

A year on, farmer Sam Coulton said the cotton fields at ‘Alcheringa’ easily swallowed up the shredded waste.

“We spread the cotton textile waste a few months before planting in June 2021,” he said in a statement from CA. “By January and the middle of the season, the waste had all but disappeared, even at the rate of 50 tonnes to the hectare.”

Soil scientist Dr Oliver Knox said that at the very least the trial showed no harm was done to soil health. He said at least 2.070kg of carbon dioxide equivalents (CI2 ) was mitigated through the breakdown of garments in the soil rather than in landfill.

“Soil carbon levels remained stable and the soil’s bugs responded well to the added cotton material.”

Cotton Australia’s Brooke Summers said the trial would be replicated in the 2022-2023 season with the addition of a Gunnedah cotton farm.

Hanes Australasia, owner of many textile brands including Sheridan and Bonds, said the company was keen to add its support.

“We couldn’t be more excited about the success of the trial in Goondiwindi,” Hanes president Tanya Deans said. “To think that we might have a scalable solution for textile waste on our shores is even more exciting.”

The Australian Fashion Council’s Clothing Data Report reveals that Australia currently imports 1.42 billion units of clothing per year, which equates to 373,000 tonnes of cloth.

You’d probably assume, and you’d be right, that locally manufactured clothing forms a tiny proportion of the production, with 38 million  items of clothing produced annually.

On an outback trip in 2021, I bought two locally made polo shirts from Goondiwindi Cotton. Expensive, but I felt so virtuous. Most of our clothing, however, is made in China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and emerging markets like Africa.

A good long time ago I was inspired to write a song “Where Do Underpants Come From?” after reading a book by Kiwi author Joe Bennett. I had some friendly correspondence with Joe as my song title was close to what he called his book “Where Underpants Come From.”

Joe was lured into writing the book after paying $8.59 for a five-pack of undies from a discount department store in Christchurch. He also lashed out on a quality pair of ‘Authentics’ for $5.99, then spent the rest of the day thinking – how could anyone possibly make a profit from selling five for $8.59?

After an initial rebuff from his agent – “Joe, it’s a crap idea. Best, Jim,” Joe set of on an investigative trail. Along the way, he trekked to China and other destinations following the supply chain from raw materials to manufactured cloth, garment-making, packaging and distribution.

If you can track this 2008 book down, it is entertaining, amusing and also illuminating, as Joe uncovers the trade’s importance to China’s emerging economy. As he says in the introduction: “There are plenty of better-informed books about China, but I suspect it is the only one that begins with a pair of underpants.”

As you may have discovered, if you deliberately go out looking for Australian-made garments, they are not easy to find and more expensive than imported items. When we first moved to Maleny in 2002, the cold winter set me off on a quest for some warm pyjamas. There was still a menswear shop in town at that stage and he showed me a pair of fleecy PJs in a black and white cow pattern. They were expensive and proved to be too warm for Maleny’s relatively mild climate (better suited for Tasmanians).

Quality lasts though and 15 years on I consigned the bottoms (the waistband elastic was gone), to the rag box. I gave the top to a musician friend who loves to dress up when she performs. I hate to think how many cheap pairs of boxers have lost their cling and gone to the rag box over the ensuing years. She Who Buys Quality Clothes and my sister-in-law (the theatre wardrobe mistress) keep trying to get me to lift my sartorial game. We go to the ballet regularly, so I don the bag of fruit I bought in Rome in 2010 and a pair of English shoes bought (in England) at a time when I was on a rare spending spree. Twelve years on, they are in good nick but alas, the tan Italian suit look came and went. Do I care?

The textile industry is important to Australia’s economy ($27 billion a year), but it is coming at a cost to the environment. The Guardian attended a meeting at which AFC chief executive, Leila Naja Hibri, admitted that the fashion industry had a “deserved” reputation for its negative impact on the environment.

“There needs to be a change in the way we design, produce, use and dispose of products,” she said.

On top of the huge amount of landfill, the textile industry also relies heavily on fossil fuels and other chemicals. Globally, 98m tonnes of non-renewable resources are used in the fashion industry, including oil to produce synthetic fibres, fertilisers to grow cotton, and chemicals to produce dye.

The Australian Fashion Council (AFC) is leading “a consortium of industry disruptors” to create Australia’s first National Product Stewardship Scheme for clothing textiles. The consortium includes brands, manufacturers, retailers, re-use charities, fibre producers, academics and waste management companies. The goal is to improve the design, recovery, re-use and recycling of textiles (with 2030 in mind), with National Waste Policy Action Plan targets.

The report, funded by the Australian government, said the annual cost to consumers was $9.2bn, meaning Australians were paying on average just $6.50 for each item of clothing.

The AFC has used the report findings to call for a levy on clothing imports to reduce textile waste. At the other end of the fashion cycle, roughly 260,000 tonnes, or 10kg a person, reaches landfill each year, the lead author of the report, Peter Allan, said.

This week I did my bit to help avoid adding textile waste to landfill, dropping off a near-new hoody to a local op shop. Perhaps it was a tight fit to begin with, but a couple of washes later, I’m like a footy player having to get someone to help me don the jersey. As a tape measure-wearing assistant in jeans shop once said (I was 40-something and shopping for a 30-inch waist), – “Um, you used to be a 30-inch waist. Sorry.”

 

 

Rental crisis raises risk of homelessness

rental-crisis-homelessness
A roof over your head (eventually). Image by www.pixabay.com,

This topic was sparked by news from a near-neighbour who had received the dreaded ‘landlord requires vacant possession’ letter.

All tenants go into a lease today knowing that the landlord can decide to sell the property, at which point they will be evicted. A lot of landlords have been doing that over the last two years, taking a profit as property prices spiralled.

The rental vacancy figures in this town and just about everywhere else would suggest that once a rental property is sold, it disappears from the rental pool – at least for a while. The national rental vacancy is 1.2% – at a time when analysis of Census housing data suggests that 700,000 private dwellings are locked up and uninhabited. More on that later.

We all know people who are renting and finding it increasingly difficult to feed their families. In recent months, there have been many stories in the media about families struggling to find a place to live. Those who find themselves at the end of a lease with no new home in the pipeline are at risk of becoming homeless.

Even when we are told the reasons for the shortage of housing, solutions are less obvious. Mostly due to self-belief and a strong self-image, some people caught between a lapsing rental and a tight vacancy rate will find their way round it.

It isn’t hard to find caravan parks, farm-stays and outback tourism ventures that need residential caretakers. The successful candidates get to park their vans for free and quite possibly pick up a small stipend as well.

People in these circumstances (a) do not regard themselves as homeless and (b) they can enjoy the luxuries afforded by a 22 ft caravan and an annexe.

June quarter data from CoreLogic shows that Australia’s rental market continues to tighten as low supply levels cause national vacancy rates to dive. Rents continued to rise across all capital cities and property types over the past three months.

Dwelling rents in the June quarter were 9.1% higher across the capital cities and up 10.8% in regional areas, compared to June 2021.

CoreLogic report author Kaytlin Ezzy said the recent upwards trend in rents has occurred mostly in the absence of overseas migration.

“This sustained period of strong rental growth has seen national dwellings record the highest annual growth in rental values since December 2008, when rental demand was supported by record levels of international migration,” Ms Ezzy said.

Vacancy rates across national dwellings fell to a record low of 1.2%, down from 2.2% this time last year.

In March, CoreLogic contributed to a report in The Guardian that found rents in Queensland had risen by as much as $200 a week over the previous two years.

The report found that steep rent rises in parts of Queensland forced people into caravans, sheds and poverty – even before widespread flooding displaced thousands more people.

While the ABS has released 2021 Census housing data, it will be “early to mid-2023” until we see the homelessness data. The most recent official data was collected in 2016 and released a year later. The homeless tally then was 116,427.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) estimates that in 2020–21, around 278,300 people received assistance from Specialised Homelessness Services (SHS). Around 111,100 clients were homeless when they first began support.

There are different categories of homelessness, apart from those who literally have nowhere to go and end up sleeping rough or in a charitable shelter. Then there are people living in sheds, garages and other unconventional buildings, couch surfing (staying with friends), hostels and unsuitable temporary accommodation.

Since late 2019, the onset of the Covid pandemic, the escalating price of real estate and an ever-increasing scarcity of rental properties has unquestionably added more individuals and families to the homeless tally. There is an increasing cohort of ‘hidden homeless’, that is people who are either not eligible to apply for support or feel they do not need it.

In Australia, some of these people head for the great outdoors. Accommodation demand driven by ‘Grey Nomads’ has produced hundreds of free camps and low-priced camp-grounds run by local show societies. The free roadside reserves, which may nor may not have a toilet/and or shower, usually have rules about how long you can stay. In Tasmania, many free camps allow you to stay for up to a month.

.Everyone’s circumstances are different, but we have met many people who had sold their house and bought a road rig. Many of the so-called Grey Nomads are retired tradies and public servants who can afford a $200,000 self-contained rig and go on the road for months at a time.

But if you travel the country and stay in free camps, you are just as likely to see a couple living in a 30-year-old caravan towed by an equally ancient car.

The big problem waiting for Australia’s new Prime Minister to tackle (after he has settled down our Pacific neighbours), is the housing crisis.

Believe me – it is a crisis. There are simply not enough houses to go around. This is particularly so in Queensland, where interstate migration has put the housing sector under massive strain.

There are reasons for the dire shortage of housing and they include delays in building new homes amid adverse weather in 2022. Then there are homes destroyed by floods or bushfires.

But as residential property analyst Michael Matusik discovered, the housing shortage is in part due to some 700,000 private dwellings that are “deliberately left vacant”.

Matusik reached this conclusion after analysing 2021 Census housing data, which showed there were one million unoccupied dwellings in Australia (about 10% of the country’s private residential accommodation).

The ABS defines unoccupied dwellings as: holiday homes (for owner’s use or rented out); investment properties without a tenant; newly built but vacant dwellings; habitable dwellings being renovated and/or vacant dwellings for sale or lease.

Matusik wrestled with those categories and calculated that after discounting the latter, 700,000 unoccupied dwellings were investment properties that were locked up rather than tenanted.

“Many of the unoccupied dwellings are in capital cities, especially Sydney and Melbourne where more apartments are in the dwelling mix,” Matusik wrote in his regular subscriber bulletin, Matusik Missive. “In these cities the proportion of overseas buyers, especially from Asia, and particularly from China, is the highest in the country.

“It is somewhat safe to say that something like 70% of the unoccupied dwellings across Australia are deliberately locked up.

“Assuming past immigration levels return, then there is a need to build some 150,000 new dwellings across Australia each year.

“If we could unlock these 700,000 empty homes, we would not need to build a new home for 4.5 years.”

While admitting this is ‘fantasy land’, Matusik says that any move to open up these dwellings would go a long way to improving short-term dwelling supply.

As we approach National Homelessness Week (August 1-7), some agencies will no doubt be calling for an earlier release of Census data on the homeless.

I asked the peak body, Homelessness Australia, for a comment; but remembered it was de-funded by the Federal Government in 2014. When one of their volunteers gets back to me, I’ll include their comment.

For now I’ll say that however bad the news is, it is better that we know sooner than later.

 

Covid- it’s everywhere

covid-masks-pandemic
Washing line 2022 Willfried Wende – www.pixabay

On a quick shopping trip this week, it seemed that every second person was wearing a Covid mask, even though there is no legal obligation to do so. Friends, relatives, neighbours and friends of friends are either in isolation because of a positive RAT test or actually have Covid-19. There’s been a nasty flu getting around South-East Queensland at the same time. The only way to tell one from the other is to take a Rapid Antigen Test.

The statistics are a bit scary. The only saving grace is that the Omicron variants are said to be ‘milder’ than the Delta strain which was rampant in 2020.

As of this morning, Queensland reported 45, 824 active cases, including 6,366 new cases in the previous 24 hours. There were 907 hospitalisations and 14 patients in Intensive Care Units. There have been 73 deaths (people who died with Covid) this week alone.

There are many unanswered questions about this third wave of the Omicron variant. Like, how come we haven’t had it? Knock on wood. Or why do some people get “long Covid’’ where symptoms persist for months?

If you look at the historical charts, you have to wonder why governments decided to take their collective feet off the pedals of the crowd control machine.

On December 16, 2021, Queensland had 17 cases (a weekly average of 9). Then we opened the borders, relaxed the mask mandate and other rules like contact tracing which had thus far kept the virus out of Queensland.

By January 17, 2022, new cases had spiked to 31,056. While numbers have since fallen away, the State reported 32, 355 new cases (between July 11 and 15), with hospitalisation rates between 800 and 900.

Cumulatively, Queensland has now recorded 1.63 million cases (equates to 32% of the population) and 1,388 deaths. So much for Omicron being more infectious but less serious than Delta.

Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard has been quoted that catching Covid is “inevitable”. Ironically former chief health officer Jeanette Young, now Governor of Queensland, was also taken down by the virus.

Did you know that the entire Queensland Maroons rugby league team held a fan day in Warwick last week? The visit started with a sold-out dinner on Tuesday night with guest speakers including Maroons coach Billy Slater. Next day there was a street parade, breakfast in the park, coaching clinics for children and then the Maroons had a training session at the local footie oval. A few days later, two members of the team, Cameron Munster and Murray Taulagi tested positive for Covid and were unable to play in the decider on Wednesday.

I did notice that team members wore masks as they mingled with the thousands of fans who turned out to meet and greet.

Which brings me back to people wearing masks – in the street, in cafes, shopping centres and pharmacies. The latter used to insist on customers wearing a mask, but without the muscle of a state-mandated instruction, they can only make polite suggestions.

Remember the days of close contacts and contact tracing? The border closures, closed-down cafes and bars? Apart from hospitals, organisations with a Covid policy and employers, it seems you don’t have to prove you are double vaccinated. Hardly anyone checks to see the green tick on your phone. I was only asked to do so twice on a three-week trip to Tasmania in April. We did find you had to wear masks on public transport in Victoria and Tasmania (as you do in Queensland, although many do not wear masks).

An approved style of mask is your first line of defence to avoid being infected by Covid-laced aerial droplets. Second line is to stay home as much as possible.

The people I feel for are those who cannot avoid being in close quarters with other people (aged care homes, prisons, detention centres etc). It is now well known that residents in aged care are vulnerable; not only because of their living circumstances, but also because most are 75 and over and in the high-risk category.

Nationally there have been 2,881 deaths in aged care homes since the pandemic began in early 2020 and 2,580 residential aged care facilities have had an outbreak during that time. It’s probably misleading to include those two facts in the same sentence because the mind goes: ‘Hey, that’s an average of one death for each facility.’  
The Guardian reported yesterday that 100 aged care residents are dying with Covid each week, with more than 700 current outbreaks. The industry fears that two-thirds of aged care homes across Australia may be grappling with outbreaks over the next six weeks.

Amid reports of a Covid outbreak on a cruise ship anchored in the Brisbane River, I went looking for places in the world where the virus had been contained. Unhappily, the virus has caught up with some of the 10 or so island countries which, until the end of 2021, had managed to stay safe. They included Nauru, which went from zero cases in late 2021 to 40% of the population being infected. Nauru, as you may or may not know, is ‘home’ to 129 asylum seekers, most of whom have been on the island since 2012.

The World Health Organisation confirms that there are currently 121 new cases in Nauru and a cumulative 6,237 cases (and one death) since January 2022.

Citing global numbers, the WHO says that as of July 11 there have been 552.5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 6.34 million deaths. As of 2 July 2022, a total of 12.03 billion vaccine doses had been administered. As for the United States, 87 million cases have been recorded since early 2020 and 1.02 million deaths. Donald Trump, we’re looking at you.

Compare that with Australia – 10,515 deaths since the first cases were seen in February 2020.

This takes me back to an early report from Seattle, the US city that gave the world the TV soap opera ‘Grey’s Anatomy’. A community choir had met for a rehearsal in the early days of Covid when nobody knew what we were dealing with.

As Live Science recalls, 52 people were unknowingly infected with Corona virus at a choir practice in Mount Vernon, Washington. The event led to the deaths of two people.

The practice happened on March 10, roughly two weeks before Washington Governor Jay Inslee issued a ‘stay home stay healthy’ executive order, barring social gatherings and non-essential travel.

That story shocked Australian choral singers. Most community choir directors I knew decided to cancel rehearsals for the foreseeable future. We mucked around on Zoom for a while and had a few tentative practices outside, but it just wasn’t the same. Eventually in 2021, as case numbers began to fall, choirs and orchestras started rehearsing again under controlled circumstances.

Experts told us that singing in a closed room was a sure-fire way to catch the virus – 20 or 30 people spraying droplets everywhere. Nobody said anything about 52,000 people in a footie stadium shouting and screaming for 80 minutes. Yes, it was an open-air event, but even so, those patrons walked in and out of the venue, used the public toilets and struggled back and forth along packed aisles, spilling beer and spreading potentially lethal aerial droplets around. Because Queensland won the State of Origin series, there was lots of hugging, kissing and selfie-posing. Then they all got on trains and buses, noisily singing the team song on the way home.

Don’t get me started. (Yes, but ‘we’ won – wasn’t it sweet? Ed)

FOMM Back Pages

Goodwills website update and August gigs

The Goodwills

Winter 2022 Newsletter

Dear Friends of the Goodwills

Here’s big thanks to people who ordered songs or albums from Bandcamp, our preferred download service and to those who paid extra. Despite writing an internet satire song in 1999, we have been slow to adapt to changing tastes in music delivery. The insight came when my nephew texted me a few years back to say: “Can’t find you on Spotify, Uncle’.

Tedious though it may have been, I have updated our website to more accurately reflect the digital age of music. We dispensed with our ecommerce shop and instead now present you with two alternatives.

There is a page called Goodwills Online that shows at a glance how many of our albums/songs are available for download or streaming. There are links to Bandcamp (our preferred music download service) and Spotify, which seems to be a necessary part of the whole.

For the old-school (people who still have CD players in their cars) Goodwills CD Shop will show you what’s available, prices and instructions on how to order physical CDs. As we still have a stock of Australia Post CD boxes and now get pensioner stamps, we can send an album to you for $2 postage. We should charge $3 but we still have stock under the bed and would prefer one day to be able to vacuum under there!

Goodwills Videos

We’ve been a bit better at producing YouTube videos although we have not done one for a while. Our most popular videos, Get the Kids off Nauru and Rangitiki have almost 2000 views between them.

A video cover of Bob’s song Courting the Net by Brisbane folkie Mary Brettell has had 1,687 views. . See if you can knock her over the 2000 line.

In 2020 we produced a series of lockdown videos where we would sit among the plants and garden beds and sing one of my songs or a cover. We should probably do an ‘after-Covid’ series, should that day ever come. Feral Cat Blues

Here is the link to our YouTube channel

Or you can view selected videos on the video page of our website. The best of them are well-produced, the rest as like us – a bit daggy.

Upcoming Goodwills gigs:

July 10: Warwick U3A Rooms 2pm. A fundraiser for refugees – donation

August 3: Red Hill Folk, Red Hill Bowls Club, Fulcher Road $5.

August 4: Muzika, 7.30pm – assorted acts. Maleny RSL $10