Archive for politics

Kids Food (and other stuff)

November 5, 2009 · Filed under cooking, feminism, health, homeschooling, parenting, politics

My kids don’t eat enough veges.  Of more accurately – they hardly eat any.  This is my most on-going area of parental anxiety (well, equal to my fear that the joys and freedoms of homeschooling will at some point be outweighed by my kids lack of academic achievement).   Even knowing I am riddling them with food issues doesn’t stop me from constantly fretting about it in front of them.  T ate everything until he was 2.5, and then gradually retreated into a bland carbohydrate diet.  J is somewhat better, but his need to “have what T is having” doesn’t help.

My dad used to tell the story of how in his family he had to eat everything on his plate.  One night he sat there, not eating his (disgusting) veges.  When everyone else left the table , he got up and (secretly, he thought) threw his food out into the yard.  His mum scraped it back onto his plate, and he had to eat it, dirt and all.

I remember my childhood meals of meat and three veg.  I literally gagged at the prospect of eating boiled peas and I pushed them around the plate trying to make the pile look smaller.

Given that P and I (now) eat a lot of veges, and they are always available, I just hope that eventually the kids will gravitate to a healthful diet.  T “knows” what a healthful diet is, and will often say he would like veges for dinner (to watch my face glow with happiness) but when they are served, his face crumples in despair.  “If only they tasted nice mum!”   He happily eats avocadoes, carrots, the peas shelled from fresh snow peas, and will nibble on a leaf.  Sigh.

Recent reading on kids’ health threw up the finding that parents are poor judges of how healthy their kids are, as they confuse happiness and healthiness.  So even though we might *know* our kids’ diet is inadequate, or they have too little exercise or too much screen time, we *think* we are getting away with it:  “Look, they’re healthy!” when in actual fact they’re ‘just’ happy.

Another snippet from the same book.  In the UK, school canteens are shifting to ‘healthy’ menus (thank you Jamie).  At one school, an entrepreneurial 13yo opened a rival canteen, selling the stuff that the school canteen used to sell.  He was doing very well, and his customers included the teaching staff, when the school closed him down as he was ‘undermining their healthy eating message’.   He was pissed off – he wasn’t doing anything illegal.

I like this story as I can’t decide what I think.  Obviously I am committed to the “healthy eating message”, but I *really* feel for this kid!  The injustice!  I take it they didn’t close down the local Maccas as it was ‘undermining the healthy eating message’.  The most amazing learning experience he probably ever had on those premises, and just shut down.  What’s he learnt now? – the little guy can’t win.

Sorry to bore those of you who have heard my experience of being arbitrarily “shut down” by school authorities because my activities didn’t suit them, but I can *still* seethe with the injustice of it!  In primary school, when I was in Year 6, the school decided that girls were not allowed on the school oval to play during lunch and recess (yes, the 1980’s – not quite the dark ages).  A friend and I started “Girls Lib”, a movement to allow girls back on to the oval.  Our initiatives included large posters advertising all the games girls used to enjoy on the oval, and a petition.  When you signed the petition, you receive an handmade badge – “Girls Lib!”  Unfortunately, the boys took this as some sort of gender war, and started ripping them off girls’ shirts – meaning my friend and I were in full scale production of the badges, to replace those lost to the neanderthal boys.

The librarian asked us to move the petition out of the library, so we relocated to near the canteen.  Then after a week or so, my classroom teacher advised that the principal had advised him that we had to stop Girls Lib, because it was too disruptive.  No boy was advised that they should stop grabbing at girls tops and ripping off their badge.  We still weren’t allowed on the oval.  CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT????????  Not a single teacher –  or parent – including my own – was prepared to step up and support our cause.  Just shut down for causing a disturbance.   That was the high & low point of my career as an activist.  A  just cause, and no one in authority cared about anything, except the quiet life.   Maybe it was at this point that I decided that school was a series of lessons in compliance and control.  He’s probably dead now, but the principal’s name was Mr Colvin, and unfortunately I have never bumped into him as an adult to give him the serve that ALL THE OTHER ADULTS SHOULD HAVE AT THE TIME.  GGGRRRRRRR.

Comments (1) »

Ruminations – post school outcomes

November 5, 2009 · Filed under homeschooling, politics, society

A newspaper reported that the OECD Report on Intergenerational Social Mobility found Australia’s education system was the third worst in the developed world for contributing to social mobility.  This fed into my biases about the ineffectiveness of school.  School’s on-going reputation as  *the* mechanism for social justice, creating “equal opportunity”, is baffling, when all around we see it doing such a brilliant job of perpetuating the status quo.  Surprise surprise, doctor’s kids have a good chance of becoming doctors, and Centrelink kids don’t.

The problem here is the flawed belief that an institution can function as a change agent.  It can’t.  The only change agent out there is another person- and in some cases an heroic teacher can be that person.  But here, the institution of school works against any developing mentor relationships, as at the end of the year, you get another teacher.  And on the side of the coin, this structure itself can preclude teachers making major investments in their relationships with the children in their class, as they know that the end of the relationship is already proscribed. 

Anyway, I pulled up the report and have to confess that I struggled with it because it’s full of economic jargon and tables that are too small to read on my PC.  But I got enough to realise that the journo at the Oz had got it wrong, and that Australia’s system is comparatively good at facilitating social mobility – comparatively, not in absolutes –  because the UK, USA and southern Europe have virtually no social mobility (even though everyone goes to school).

This research supports *early* intervention/care/education as the best way to overcome social disadvantage.  So this is not news.  Everything you read says that if you want to make a difference in kid’s lives you have to get in there early (80 – 90% of the brain synapse connections are made from age 0 – 3)  Policy makers just can’t seem to come up with wholistic ways to do this.  They continue to direct their efforts at school – starting at kindy when the kids turns 4!  If you believed they had the nous to be that organised, you’d think it was a deliberate plot *not* to make a difference in the lives of disadvantaged children.

Further, it confirms my view that school is designed for and by the middle classes/elites.  It serves their children well – it’s obviously designed as a neat continuum from a middle class infancy, and if you didn’t get that, well, you struggle.  And I note that the good economists at the OECD recommend investment in early intervention for disadvantaged groups rather than re-designing school to work for non-elites.   I mean, we wouldn’t want to change what is working is working perfectly well for us, would we?  Worse, we don’t seem to have the imagination to know that it could even *be* different.

 The report finds that in many cases, it is the average socio-economic standing of the school’s parent group, rather than the socio-economic standing of the individual child’s parents, that is the key to a child’s own socio-economic outcomes after school.   This one’s pretty interesting, and I guess is behind the push for aboriginal kids to go to flash boarding schools….. but obviously this is only ever going to be the solution for a minority of disadvantaged kids, as it’s a numbers game.  If a whole bunch of disadvantaged kids rock up to Geelong Grammar, then they are bringing down the average.   I gather that this is also the argument for a school voucher system…  if you can’t afford to buy a house in a rich area and thereby get your kids into the local state school where the other rich neighbourhood kids go, you should be able to buy your way into these schools with your vouchers. 

Anyway, I guess that makes it clear what you are actually buying when you spend money on a private school…. and the more money you spend the more you are putting your child into an environment where chances are all the parents are filthy rich, and somehow – by osmosis – but the best I can think of (and I couldn’t find analysis in the report as to *why* this finding holds) is that if most of the parents are uni-educated and rich, then this is the value system that the child is being exposed to and so they work hard to fit in with that peer group.  Is it that the dominant value system of the school community is a key driver of individual outcomes?

This makes sense, and is supported by all the research that says that in our society teenagers are more influenced by their peers than their parents – and the main reason for this is that they spend far more time with the former than the latter.  That is actually the community within which they have to function, rather than the community of parents/adults.

And is the reason for the high academic results (though I haven’t seen any research on subsequent adult socio-economic outcomes) achieved by some of the charter schools in the US working with disadvantaged groups?  That the seeming inexhaustible energy and enthusiasm of the (young) individual principals/teachers involved is able to oust the general malaise?

On a related topic, I see that in her quest to have more students from low socio-economic backgrounds get to university, Julia Gillard is starting to try to break the link between school results (TER & similar) and university entrance.  (An acknowledgement that the school system can’t  deliver equitable outcomes?)  In Victoria they are are trialling new ways of offering university places – focusing on aptitude tests and interviews and portfolios of work. ( All good news for people who don’t bother to go to school by the way)  I see that the President of the Australian Secondary School Association (of something like that) is all in favour of this, as he feels that the focus on university entrance severely limits the “meanings” of post-compulsory education.  Unfortunately the only other “meaning” he mentioned in the interview was vocational training.

Well, this is all half-baked I’m afraid.  I’ve had it sitting in draft thinking I’ll have time to clear my thinking, but I have just seen that Noel Pearson has pipped me to the post in the latest Quarterly Essay - on “Education and Equality in Australia”. (!!)  The title?  “Radical Hope”.  Anyway, I’m off to find a decent newsagent & I’m hoping to be inspired!

Comments (2) »

Ruminations – school attendance

October 1, 2009 · Filed under politics

Aboriginal kids should attend school every day.  No reasons, no excuses.  That seems to be the consensus of the school hierarchy and the Australian newspaper.

I went to the community store in Kalumbaru and it was the after school rush, and one of the teachers was haranguing a parent who was there with her child, insisting that it was important that the child went to school and she had to be there tomorrow, etc etc…… which made me cringe.  How would it be to live somewhere so small that when you go to buy your groceries you’re publicly bailed up by govt representatives for perceived infractions?  Who knows why the child wasn’t there that day?  Certainly all the people in the store didn’t get to find out, as the poor mum scurried away.

Then in Halls Creek they had posters all over town “It’s not cool not to go to school” or some equally trite line, and charts showing the previous week’s attendance – 70% – complete with patronising comments on “well done year 4!!!!  81%!!!!!!  Sigh. 

Then in a more recent paper I read about the Yarrabah community, where Year 3 students have tripled their literacy and numeracy competency levels…… but at the end of the article we discover that their attendance rate hasn’t changed, and is only 70% as well.    Is it the “consistent focus on high expectations and standards of curriculum delivery….” cited by the Principal, or is it the Men’s group formed in 1998 which has worked to restore the role of men in their families?  Increased school attendance didn’t seem to be the factor.

Anyway, despite this rambling (it’s late) I’m not necessarily concluding that there is no place for school in the lives of aboriginal – or other - children.  My main argument is always that if you want to change outcomes for children you need to focus your work on families, and not the red herring of school.   And by the by, if you still want children to attend school, you might want to make it  an attractive propostion, rather than some of the dusty barbed wired places I’ve seen around here.  Rather than threatening parents with a $1000 fine – as seen on the posters in Halls Creek, or loss of Centrelink benefits (that’s bound to help children) maybe school could be such a great place that children are busting and pestering to get there. 

It’s the whole soft power thing.  Researchers drew a small picture of a fly on a urinal and found that that one needed a lot less cleaning than the others.  Give people an attractive target and they will probably do what you want. Imagine if you were only allowed to go to school three days a week.  On ’your’ days, there were up to 10 kids there.  It was held in a small cottage amongst  lovely gardens with pets and a swimming pool.   Inside was real, comfortable furniture, great games, books, food for preparing lunch together…..

but apparantly there’s no money for school buildings.

Comments (2) »

Ruminations

October 1, 2009 · Filed under homeschooling, parenting, politics, society

Halls Creek was a weird kind of apartheid arrangement, where all the white “service” people (police/teachers/public servants) had nice houses at one end of the town, and the local aboriginal people lived in the seeming ghetto -  at the other end of town.  I can understand that if the community doesn’t have enough skilled people to take up local positions then you have to attract them from somewhere else, and that probably includes access to a reasonable house.  But why is the urgency and outcome there for one end of town and not the other?  Why are there ”ends”?   How is it that decent housing has been achieved in only half the town?  I read in the paper that the Fed Govt SIHIP (strategic indigenous housing initiative program – or something like that) for the NT has spent $45 million dollars and haven’t yet built a single house.  Where the money went seems unreported.

Speaking of the lack of investigative journalism – another article in the Oz the other week…..  Lightening Ridge, a community in NSW.  Many of the children have been removed by DoCS.  The mothers claim there has been no abuse; that the DoCs workers view their lifestyle through a white middle class prism and don’t approve, and remove the children citing “neglect”.  Presumably the families have gone through the relevant DoCS/govt processes and got nowhere, so contacted the fourth estate.  The relevant journalists managed to get the official line from DoCS, that the childrens’ removal had been appropriate, and nothing else.  Any 15 year old could do that.  Where is the investigation?  If my children were removed because my lifestyle  didn’t fit with govt official values and I was desperate and contacted a journalist and their “investigation”  comprised a phone call to the relevant govt dept and writing down the official line….. I don’t know what I’d do.   That seems more like what you would expect in China, rather than Australia.  

Anyway, this was an interesting article for me on another issue as well. When they visited Lightening Ridge, the journo interviewed a white middle class woman who had lived there for many years in an abandoned bus with no running water and homeschooled her children (I know this as the journo reported these astonishing facts)    It seems there is no school there.  This mother was waxing lyrical about the fab childhood her kids had had, learning about the bush and cars and cooking etc…. and that this was the childhood that all the kids (black & white) were having…..  anyway her kids had “made good” (more astonishment) one doing postgrad studies in Canada, and the other a public servant with the Vic state govt (you can see where the journo got sidetracked….)  Anyway, obviously I appreciated the h/ed kids “success” stories, but I wondered whether the aboriginal children were seeking/sourcing similar opportunities from this childhood – not so much that these are the only type of outcomes that are “good” in my view, but did the white middle class mum in that environment continue to express/espouse those middle class values of “the world is your oyster”  “you can do anything” ” what will you study at uni?” etc etc… and it was actully her input at this level that made a difference?? 

Anyway, I have no knowledge of the potential ”successful” outcomes achieved by the aboriginal children of the community as the article didn’t go there.

Leave a comment »

Civil Disobedience

April 23, 2009 · Filed under ethics, homeschooling, politics, society, voluntary simplicity

T is now officially in Year 1.   By law in Western Australia, I am supposed to register him with the education department as being home educated.   This would involve a “moderator” visiting me about once a year to discuss our progress (or lack thereof).  Well, stuff that.  I figure this is a crap system.   I mean, come on.  Either attend school 30 hours a week for approximately 40 weeks (1200 hours), or they come *one* hour a year…..  to offer what, exactly?

I’m not a Ronald Reagan fan, but I understand his point, when he said the nine most frightening words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”.    The ideology of schooling is such that it is a *compulsory* government service.  Along with gaol and being committed into a mental institution.  Hmmm. 

I am deliberately rejecting their service…  so I am obliged to notify them of same, and welcome them into my home so they can moderate us against their service’s benchmarks?  No thanks.  The only legitimate reason I can think of for the government to want to do this would be as some kind of child welfare check.  Which it demonstrably *isn’t* as

1) they don’t turn up till the child is 6; and

2) under their own rules they can’t insist on actually interacting with the child.

A few months ago I was getting riled up about this bad law, and started looking into civil disobedience, as I was intending to deliberately break this law.  And who should turn out to be the father of civil disobedience….  inspiration to both Ghandi and Mandela?  None other than Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden and inspiration for the whole voluntary simplicity movement!  I love this guy!  I confess I find the old fashioned style of writing somewhat turgid, but when he writes that it is the *duty* of every thinking (wo)man to disobey bad laws, I’m reading him loud and clear!

If the education department ever tracks me down (sirens might start sounding at their HQ when I press “post” on this) I’ll be

a) suitably impressed by their big-brother capabilities, and

b) interested to see what they actually do. 

I’ll also be interested to see whether I am more or less welcome than outlaw bikie gangs down at the Australian Council for Civil Liberties.  I’m not yet saving the world, but I’m staking a claim on our own space in the world.

Comments (2) »

Morality, Freedom & Responsibility

March 24, 2009 · Filed under ethics, politics, society

Ok, more ruminations on political line-ups.

Here is an insight on morality that I would like to share with you all, as I found this quite interesting.  This is lifted from the work of Jonathan Haidt, as reported by Don Arthur in “Policy”.  According to Haidt, morality is intuited – and only rationalised afterwards - and moral intuitions rest on five foundations:

1)  Harm/care.  This flows from our ability to empathise and creates an aversion to seeing other people suffering.  It generates feelings of compassion as well as approval for people who care for the vulnerable and protect those in danger.

2)  Fairness/reciprocity.  The foundation of judgements about justice and is associated with feelings of anger, guilt and gratitude.  Fairness is about following rules that enable individuals to cooperate in mutually beneficial activities.  When people believe that they or others have been treated unfairly they feel anger.  When they feel that they have treated others unfairly they feel guilt.

3)  Ingroup/loyalty.  Is about putting the group first.  To be loyal to the family, tribe or nation is to put its interests and welfare above your own and those of outsiders.  It is associated with feelings of trust towards other group members and wariness and distrust towards outsiders.

4)  Authority/respect.  Is associated with feelings of awe and admiration towards the group’s governing institutions and leaders.  It gives rise to virtues such as respect, duty and obedience.

5)  Purity/sanctity.  Is associated with the emotion of disgust.  To do with an aversion to things linked to the spread of disease (rotting meat, pus).  To be pure is to keep yourself clean and disease-free.  It gives rise to rules about food, personal hygiene and sexual behaviour.  A person who feels that they are morally unclean feels shame.

Social conservatives subscribe to all five moral intuitions, and see all of these as the basis for public morality and government action.  Social progressives (libertarians and liberals) only subscribe to the first two intuitions, and think that the last three are matters of personal preference or prejudice.   Hence the tension between the groups about what types of matters should be subject to government action, and differing views on issues such as gay marriage.

This helps to understand conservative angst about “post modern” morality, and their concerns that we are all going to hell in a handbasket as there are “no moral truths” anymore.   Turns out they extrapolate that social progressives don’t subscribe to *any* of the moral intuitions, when in fact the first two remain a basis for consensus.

Now to the freedom bit.  It seems there is a (class-based) argument from social conservatives that many people can’t cope with the personal freedoms promoted by social progressives.  For example, not everyone has the personal and financial resources to cope with the fall out from easily available divorce.  So, the argument goes, we restrict people’s personal freedoms in order to protect people from themselves/predatory forces (and not uncoincidently promote our own moral agenda at the same time.)

Now this is interesting to me, because isn’t this a version of the same (class-based) argument from social democrats/liberals that many people can’t cope with economic freedom?  That is, they would not be able to negotiate their own conditions of employment, would not be able to plan their own retirement etc etc?  So we restrict people’s economic freedoms in order to protect people from themselves/predatory forces (and not uncoincidently promote our own worldview at the same time.)

I’m not saying either argument is completely wrong….. and of course I support some type of safety net that catches people before they descend into hopelessness/homelessness/helplessness.   But it’s interesting to think about how much freedom – and therefore responsibility - our ‘leaders’ think we, as individuals, as families, as communities, can cope with.  And I guess my argument (as a freshly minted libertarian) is that they under-estimate us…… and thereby undermine us.

Leave a comment »

Finding a niche

March 19, 2009 · Filed under politics, society

I write to report that it turns out I am not an anarchist.  I think I might be a libertarian!  Don’t you love it when you find a label that helps explain you to yourself?  I owe this insight to the latest edition of “Policy” magazine.  I’m sure you are all subscribers already, but I have only just discovered it (you see how my lack of newspapers is starting to manifest…)

So, a libertarian is someone who is socially progressive and also economically liberal – that is, believes in small government.   I knew I was probably a libertarian when I read that it is “not a popular philosophy.  It’s supporters have never controlled a major political party or created a popular mass movement.”  Right, that sounds like the kind of forlorn hope I’d normally get involved with.  At the risk of major over-simplification:

Belief in social control + economic freedom = conservative

Belief in social freedom + economic control = liberal

Belief in social freedom + economic freedom = libertarian

Belief in social control and economic control = …ummmm….  dictator?

Note to old friends who knew me in my Marxist days:  this is a sad truth that came true for me: the older I got, the more disenchanted with government I became; there’s only so many years you can work for government and/or interface with them before you lose hope, and decide that the need for accountability inevitably leads to bureaucracy which inevitably leads to inertia, few outcomes, loads of unintended consequences and a bunch of self-important bureaucrats.   But worse, it now appears to me that government is implicated in community breakdown – in that the more they take responsibility for the solution to social problems, the less responsibility individuals and community take.   I’m still workshopping this in my own head, so feel free to howl me down. 

Anyway, this is not to say I am about to cite “low taxes” as the answer to every possible social problem.   In my view, the problem with “government services”, as with our our now crumbling capitalist system, is one of scale.   When free trade as the ‘peaceful, non-coercive exchange of goods and services’ transmogrifies into faceless suits crunching together rebadging and selling debts, it’s not surprising when the whole edifice topples over.  I recommend E. F. Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful”.  I think I need to read it again, as I suspect it has the answers as to how we might reinvent ourselves through this crisis.

Comments (2) »

Detox

March 11, 2009 · Filed under politics

I have just cancelled my daily newspaper delivery.  I have been meaning to do this for a long time.  I planned to do it after the 2007 Federal Election, then I planned to do it  after the 2008 American election, and I have finally just done it, before I can be lured into the next news cycle. 

Basically there is nothing happening (apart from relentless economic gloom).  I think I was the last person reading about Peter Costello, and short of spearheading a military coup, there is now officially *nothing* he could do that might interest me.

I seem to have acquired too many hobbies recently, so it’s good to ditch such an unproductive one.  No more trying to read the newspaper at a ‘breakfast’ that goes too long, and no more headspace devoted to letters to the editor that never get sent.

Leave a comment »

The Home Economy

March 6, 2009 · Filed under cooking, environment, gardening, politics, society, voluntary simplicity

I read something recently about turning the home from a unit of consumption into a unit of production.  A challenge.  More so, because I realise that a lot of things that we “produce” hinge on previous consumption.  Is this a test of good consumption, that it lends itself to production? 

Things that our home currently produces (with caveats)

* organic fruit and vegetables (some, and we need to get into more seed saving from our crops)

* education  – home schooling

* maternity services – home birth

* breastmilk

* preventative health care (includes previously purchased exercise equipment)

* preventative dental care (buying toothbrushes/paste/floss)

*  meals (based on purchased ingredients)

* home maintenence (can require specific purchases, plus use of previously acquired tools)

* car/motorbike maintenence (as above)

* music (previously acquired instruments)

*art (some donated /some purchased items such as paint)

* wrapping paper and cards (getting away with this using kids’ art)

* greywater used for non-food producing plants

* this blog

Things our home *could* produce if we set our minds to it:

* clothing (would need to upgrade/learn skills and use recycled products)

* more food from gardening

* transport (walk more/use bikes)

*fuel (considering future manufacture of biofuel, but does require inputs)

*fresh water (would require tanks)

*furniture (using current tools and loads of timber lying around)

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head – I’m sure there’s more.  Not that we are necessarily aiming for self-sufficiency.  As empowering as that might be,  my view is that this is not actually a good or viable model for humanity.   It’s unrealistic to think that 6 billion plus people can all live self-sufficiently.  We need to be investing in sustainable infrastructure, and sharing our resources.   Plus, humans are ultimately a social species.  We *are* interdependent on each other, and hiding from that truth doesn’t solve any problems.   Come Armageddon, what’s the point living in self-sufficient utopia if you’re patrolling the borders with guns?

Comments (1) »

Global Financial Crisis – Part 2

February 28, 2009 · Filed under politics, voluntary simplicity

I am currently feeling like a financial genius.  For many years P & I resisted all advice that we should “leverage the equity in our house” into investments in shares and other property.  Instead, we were very retro, and continued to focus on paying off debt.  The one debt I can never repay is the life-changing advice I read some years ago in the book “Your Money or Your Life” by Joe Dominguez & Vicki Robin.   I highly recommend it.

Mainly, we were just lazy.  I remember my brother once commenting that I would never be rich, as I just wasn’t interested enough in money.  I thought this was a fairly acute observation, not just of me, but of patterns of wealth.  However, times have changed my friends.  I *am* interested in politics, and these days politics is, quite obviously, all about money.  (I guess it always was, but now I can’t avoid it).  Economics is my new pet subject.  Just ask me about the economy’s automatic stabilisers, or, my current favourite,  moral hazard.  This seems to be the burning question of the times.  Should people/companies who made poor decisions suffer the consequences of those decisions……  because if they don’t, then they are living every capitalists dream:  privatised profits and socialised losses.   But if we do let people who made poor decisions go down the gurgler, then they’ll take  innocent bystanders with them.  Neither of these propositions are vote winners, and this is why I *love* the sport of politics.  Wrestle with that one you arseholes!

While I’m on the subject of those arseholes, let me say that they have sold us all down the river with their naive idea that we could all be “investors”, rather than Centrelink “customers”.  First Paul Keating with compulsory superannuation…. did he not consider that some people might want to retire during a downturn?  And then John Howard with his idea that we could all be shareholders  (so everyone proceeded to lose money on Telstra… et al.)  They were complicit in sending a message that investments always went up….. and if they didn’t you could ride through the downturn…..   a la Warren Buffet.

But, I digress.  On our road to living debt free P & I came to the inevitable conclusion that the easiest way to get rid of debt was to sell the house we had, and buy one we could actually afford.   We jagged it and sold at the top of the market.  (The sale went a bit pear shaped but that’s another story.)  So now, based on feverish readings of all things financial, and Kevin Rudd’s ever more desperate-looking attempts to prop up Australian housing prices (global, Kevin, GLOBAL),  we are grappling whether to take a punt and try to sell our house now, before we go, and then buy again when we get back.  (It may already be too late.)  This is based on four premises:

1)  It is looking ever more likely that house prices are about to fall off the cliff;

2) Even if they don’t, they’re not going up in the next year or so;

3)  Money in the bank is guaranteed by Kevin Rudd, unlike money tied up in housing;

4) If we get it completely wrong, we’ll still have the camper trailer and P is starting to really resent the on-going work of home ownership anyway.

So there you go folks.  That’s financial planning, 2009 style.  Selling the house to try and save your bacon.

Comments (2) »

« Previous entries
Next Page »