Wake Up! It’s 2008 already.
The 2007-2008 Christmas - New Year holiday period ended this week, with millions of office workers and civil servants heading back to their offices after a break of two weeks or more. That’s one of the really good things about Australia, and one of the delights of living in the Lucky Country.
Not everybody gets time off over Christmas/New Year, however. If they did, the city, and indeed the country, could not function. So people in our essential services soldier on with minimum staff levels until the country starts firing on all cylinders once again.
Not everybody gets two weeks off. Some get four weeks or longer, and that used to be the Australian way. But since I came here in the Seventies, many of the things we took for granted in this society have been slowly whittled away. Just look at WorkChoices, as brought in by John Howard.
Yes, I do believe the unions were once too strong and had been damaging the country. But now they have been eviscerated, and with their power gone, the upper hand is back with the employers again. So workers rights, that were won through so much pain and hardship, are a thing of the past.
Sometimes it’s better the devil you know, eh?
Also in the past are many of the rights we took for granted by growing up in a (so-called) free and democratic society… Many of these came from the Magna Carta in England, when the barons forced King John to sign on the dotted line at Runnymede in 1215.
Magna Carta guaranteed the liberties of the King’s free subjects to the things we take (or took) for granted in the 20th Century, and it became the forerunner to other important documents including the US Constitution and the Australian one.
Don’t forget, we have long enjoyed rights, such as:
- No imprisonment without trial
- The right to see and face your accusers
- The right to trial by jury
- Freedom of speech
Little by little, these freedoms and being whittled away. And if you don’t wake up, they will be gone before you know it.
Thank God, I live in Australia. At least I can still have a gripe about these things at the moment, and not be locked up. Many places have never known such freedoms that you probably take for granted.
Wake up!
The Internet gives me the power to be heard. How long though, before we are all muffled by the powers that be? I do know the Internet terrifies them…
And I do fear for my children, and their children too.
Will you please think about what I’ve just said?