Quiet, please …

As <insert commercial TV station’s name here> draws the net cord on another summer of tennis, I’ve let the 60,000 tweets coalesce into some sentences with too many adjectives to run through a few of my favourite moments of one of my favourite times of year:

1/. You say goodbye, I say hello: two Australian men reached the fourth round of the Open for the first time since 1976, when Mark Edmonson invented tennis (NB: I am inventing this. It is not true. I think.); one a ‘wretched child’ (copyright Bernard Keane) the other, Bernard Tomic. No, switcheroo. After giving many of us joy with his on court calm and the realisation that at 19, he has that something else that leaves you a little slack-jawed in awe, Tomic has reverted to being another Gold Coast dickhead taking road etiquette lessons from Shane Warne. The much-maligned (well, by me, for his entire Sorbent-endorsing career) Little Lley Lley bundled himself into the commentary bunker without so much as a, ‘jeez, my career’s almost over, what should I do?’. He’s a natural. He knows the nuances of the current crop’s game and adds value to the viewing experience. Do yourself a favour, son: announce your retirement and sew up a contract. Which brings me to …

2/. Seven’s commentary team: in the history of sport, has there ever assembled a more annoying, sexist, Captain Obvious bunch than this lot? OK, Channel 9’s cricket team has that trophy in perpetuity, and Versus’ coverage of the Tour de France, where they use on-screen markers to point out Lance Armstrong, is certainly the most brain embolism-inducing; but Seven’s whacky ability to combine cross-promos, ad breaks during games, the pointless Megawalls and crowd-o-meters, with new bullshit, such as ‘Get Jimbo to ask an open mic question’ writes itself. As Fairfax’s chief sports columnist, Richard Hinds, tweeted last night, ‘is it Marry My Kitchen or My Boy Rules?’ Enough with the South Australian princess, the endless shots of the WAGs, the fairly disgraceful promotion of gambling, Todd Woodbridge for being Todd Woodbridge, and the question on everyone’s lips (well, mine): why was Henri Leconte banished to the back courts this year? I love him. He brings the crazy, the passion, the ‘YES!’ courtside. Who cares that he’s biased toward French players? He’s French. It’s a given. My, ‘bring back Henri’ campaign starts Monday, 30 January 2012.

3/. The Twitspats: not so much a fight as my good friend, Melbourne journalist and friend of the game, Neil McMahon, retweeting obnoxious comments made by Bernard Keane. Bernard, you misanthropic old prick, if you can’t grasp the basics (i.e. Rafael Nadal is among the world’s most humble athletes, not a prick), and want to act like a giant ‘wretched child’, be my guest. Tennis is generally a game where even if you love a player who loses, you can say, ‘tennis was the winner on the day’ after a match the quality of the Nadal-Federer semi. It was, as the kids say, amazeballs, and a joy to watch.

4/. The Twitspats Mark II or ‘it’s all about me’: it began in Bris Vegas, where my tendency (ok, constant) references to yesterday’s Great British Hope and today’s Scotsman, Andy Murray, as ‘Andy Pandy Have a Fuckin’ Shandy’ drew the ire of the Andy Murray Fanclub of Buttfuck, Idaho in an exchange which went something like this:

Me: “Oh, fer fuck’s sake, Andy Pandy Have a Fuckin Shandy is on course for a title, if only because he doesn’t want to have a meltdown in front of Lendl.”

Andy Pandy Have a Fuckin’ Shandy Fan: “You’re just JEALOUS because Andy Murray is the second coming of Christ. You are PATHETIC.”

Me: ‘Have you never heard of The Thick of It? Oh wait, you’re from Buttfuck Idaho. That would be a no.” BLOCKED.

The bestest, everest, tennis twitspat of my summer was the advent of Bernard Tomic’s Twitter account. I am a Tomic fangirl, so I started following. My suspicions (and those of a fair few others) that this wasn’t Our Kid but a fake account set up by a 17 year old whose Twitter bio reads, ‘dancing in his garage’ started when he thanked said garage dancer for helping set up his account. When challenged to prove his Tomic-ness, he asked his followers to help verify the account. Um, yeh, right. Night after night of exhausting four-or five set matches, Our Kid was tweeting well into the early hours, not insights into his day, but RTs of people who asked for RTs. When asked to post a pic to settle the matter once and for all, he announced he was quitting twitter and went deep quiet faster than a South Korean submarine. The sad fact of the matter is he wasn’t a good fake. He failed to bring the funny; if done properly, say in the Fake Shane Watson league, it was the time and place to do it. I do like that he accused me of trying to make him feel worthless; a tweet that went around the true believers and earned me so much gold it was multi-platinum.

5/. The derp-domination of summer came to an end: the great twitter war of ancient Greek words for womb faded away. The King’s Tribune got a well-deserved write up in The Age, and I discovered that Juzzy and Jane have a child. Oh, there was also the great reveal of Paula Matthewson’s sekrit identity and the even greater reveal that Twitter has a ‘cool kids’ clique. I think it’s all a crock of shit, so ner, ner, ne, ner, ner, go and have a shandy the fucking lot of you. Mine’s an Old, because that’s what Newcastle Under 8s drink after a hard 7am training session on grass courts (it was the 70s) before taking it to the Merewether under 12s (and their poxy bitumen excuse for a competition court) and going down, bravely, 6-0 6-0.

6/. The derp-domination of summer did not come to an end: shrieking is not a feminist issue. The decibel-defying play of Maria Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka drew Agnieszka Radwanska out of the locker room to say it did put her off her game. Things I do not agree with: tonight’s final being labelled the showdown of the grunters. Plenty of players, male and female, grunt on and off during matches. I put that down to sheer exertion. Sharapova and Azarenka shriek on almost every point. It’s not grunting, it’s screaming, and to me, pure gamesmanship. What I loathe is the idea that the on-court shrieking gives open slather to denigrate these athletes with the cheap Neanderthal crap of, ‘jeez, how would they go in bed?!?’ (yes, professional sports commentator for ABC Grandstand, Glenn Mitchell, I’m looking at you, you tool of monumental proportion). As we’ve seen throughout the Australian Open, gamesmanship exists in some really shiteous ways: Rafael Nadal’s 800 ball bounces before serve; Novak Djokovic wandering around court in second sets like he’s been shot and about to throw in the towel; players looking to their boxes for confirmation that they should take a challenge – but the shrieking takes the cake. Sadly, it detracts from the fact that they are in the final because they’ve played better tennis.

7/. Controversy Corner with Margaret Court: The Guardian reported that British teenager, Laura Robson, ‘walked unwittingly into a political row’ by wearing a rainbow hairband as part of the protest against Court’s abhorrent homophobia. I shit you not, this made The Guardian. Margaret Court’s hate-filled fundie fucktardedness is mind-boggling in its intensity, but she got a platform at this time of year because she is the greatest female tennis player Australia has produced and has a fourth court named after her. The Rainbow Protest to get the arena named after her changed fizzled, so we were left with a progressive newspaper arguing that a teenaged British player with a multi-coloured hairband was leading the anti-homophobic charge. In a sport where, arguably, homosexual women have said, ‘bring it on, we’re gay’, for a lot longer than any other pursuit, sporting or otherwise, I find it difficult to say that her king-size ker-azy deserves stripping changing the name of the arena. Court has been denounced for her reprehensible statements by former players and almost everyone with a brain. She’s a patently bat-shit crazy woman who invented her own church. Still, her record as a player is mind-boggling and unlikely to be repeated: she won more than half of the Grand Slam singles tournaments she played (24 of 47) She won 192 singles titles before and after the Open Era – an all time record. Her career singles win-loss record was 1,177-106, for a winning percentage of 91.74 percent on all surfaces (hard, clay, grass, carpet); also an all time record. She won at least 100 singles matches in 1965 (113-8), 1968 (107-12), 1970 (113-6), and 1973 (100-5). She won more than 80 percent of her singles matches against top 10 players (297-73) and was the year-end top ranked player seven times. (Source: Wikifuckingpedia). She is, statistically, the Don Bradman of women’s tennis. If we’re going to honour an Australian woman, may I suggest the Evonne Goolagong Arena; Goolagong’s achievements are right up there with the best (14 Slams in the Open era); may I also suggest a name change would give Court and her ilk a greater platform for their nutbag platforms, and a generation of people who laud her tennis achievements a reason to hate teh gays. I’ve never seen Margaret Court given the same respect the men hold for Rod Laver– a lesson for all of us? The locker room has spoken. Let the record stand, but shun the descent of a great into raving crank.

8/. #tweetlikeToddWoodbridge #tweetlikeaChannel7commentator #AustralianOpenfashiontweets … if it wasn’t a free three-minute ad for Nike in the guise of an exclusive behind-the-scenes interview with Serena Williams, we’ve been treated day-in, day-out, to the unnecessary commentary on what female players are wearing on court, down to the colour of the strapping on their lithe legs. Love the shoes, love the skirt, love the bag, love it all. Belongs in the front row of a Milan catwalk, not courtside or commentary box in a Grand Slam. The perfect comeback? …

9/. The Calippo Curse: it started with Fernando Verdasco. Retina-scorching clothing the colour of an 80s iceblock. Having never eaten a Calippo, I struggled for the name, and then it came to me, courtesy of a pointer from my mate, @iamtheoracle to the amusing twitter stream of a Collingwood player. As players fell – Tsonga, Dolgopolov, all of them decked out in #Calippo, it seemed appropriate to take on my nemesis, Todd Woodbridge, and play a few games of piss-taking fashion tweetage between score checks. #Calippo caught on between a few tweeps. I’ll get Woodbridge in the end.

10/. Finally, quiet please. It’s the most basic of rules: if you are in the crowd, you do not call out between serves. End of; no correspondence shall be entered into. For all of the gamesmanship, this is a game of etiquette and deserves to be treated as such. Tomas Berdych learnt a very harsh lesson when he refused to shake hands with Nicolas Almagro after defeating the Spaniard in the fourth round. He broke the code. In other matches, I’ve seen the victor not only pay lip service to the vanquished, but applaud the gladiator. I love that today’s top players are in touch with the history of the game; that Rafael Nadal treats a practice court visit from Rod Laver as a privilege, the iPhone cameras out to record the moment; these amazing young men childlike in his company; the great Roger Federer in tears on accepting the 2006 trophy from his hands. Does this happen at any other Grand Slam? I don’t know; but it melted me when I heard, ‘Mr Laver’ from Novak Djokovic after his win last night. It sums up why I love this sport. So, quiet please; acknowledge the mastery, the guile, the on-court IQ and the physical and mental will that prevails in the end. Thank you, Vika and Maria, Nole and Rafa for giving it everything. Let the finals of the 2012 Australian Open commence. My tips? Azarenka and Djokovic.

12 for ’12: How I Use Twitter

Blame @mfarnsworth entirely.

After a series of Direct Messages (or DMs, as the kids say) on 28 December, Malcs posted a primer on how he uses Twitter. I hate to disappoint you by not revealing the content of said coup planning, I mean, direct messages, but having been encouraged by the estimable Mr Farnsworth into sharing my Twitter weirdness, here it is:

1/. In the beginning …

… there were politics and elections. I joined Twitter while working as a NSW political staffer on 4 April 2009. I was probably bored during Question Time & thought, ‘I know. I’ll give that Twitter thing a go’. It could very easily have been the trapeze I decided to take up that afternoon, but I started (a locked) Twitter account under my own name.

I soon discovered that to get the most out of Twitter, you have to put yourself out there. I unlocked my account, which didn’t go down very well with some of my former political masters – not because I was giving away state secrets, but because of the old political adage: ‘if you don’t want it in the Sunday papers, don’t do it’. I was warned that my openness about my mental illness (particularly, talking about my anxiety disorder medication in what I thought was a fairly innocuous way) was setting me up as an easy mark for the then-Opposition. To this day, I think it had more to do with the potential embarrassment for a story on staffers – and again, ‘staffers are never the story’.

2/. Why Twitter?

Twitter’s allure as a news and expert opinion aggregator is a no-brainer. In 2009, I used Twitter as a way of accessing information that helped me enormously while I was studying international relations.  By 2010, in real-time, I was getting booth-by-booth results in the UK General Election, followed by the US Congressional races and sharing with incredulity the most awful attack ads I could find with @chas_usa. This year, I followed the Presidential election and violence in Cote d’Ivoire closely and engaged on a deeper level with people in Africa. Sometimes the foreign policy wonks / correspondents respond to my questions or tweets; most of the time I just seize upon the links and information they provide.

3/. Human Contact

There are #wonkdrinks, which in Sydney has lost momentum, and tweet-ups if someone is in town. I’ve met people who share my passions. I’ve made friendships I hope will last a lifetime – but a word to the wise: Twitter is not your friend. Never again will I participate in real life rescue missions for people I have never laid eyes on. Sounds callous? Try calling ambulances because people say they’ve overdosed, only to have the ambos told to go away. Then more messages and phone calls along the same lines. Result: cops at my door in the early hours of the morning whose jaws dropped on the floor when I said I had only ‘met’ this person through Twitter; followed by a complaint days later that I had made vexatious calls. Fortunately, there were several people who had been contacted and if I had to prove what happened, I could. Also: I’m more cautious about meeting people (only in a group setting first) and handing out my number via DM.

4/. Following

If someone follows me, I check out their tweets. If they’re real, and not trying to sell me real estate, cars or their social media expertise, I return the follow. It’s polite, and why I think my follower to following ratio is fairly even. That said, I will probably cut the number of accounts I follow in the new year – as I said, I rarely use a global filter. I either want to get news from you or engage with you. If we’re not getting that out of Twitter, what’s the point? I try to keep my list ‘clean’ as I rarely apply a global filter (exception: #auspol). Which leads me to my next topic …

5/. To block, or not to block?

I look at my new followers carefully, and I don’t just block spambots. Don’t try to sell me stuff. You’re blocked. If you tweet quotes, and that’s all – blocked. If you engage in vitriolic behaviour toward people I know on Twitter (especially people I have met) and respect, I will call you out on it, probably with added swearing, in public if you’re being an utter twat and then get out the old blockity block. See more under ‘Criticism and Abuse’ and ‘The Great Unhinging’.

6/. Conversation

While I still use Twitter as a news and opinion source, the great, unbridled joy I’ve found is when you bond with people over random things, like a mutual appreciation for the built environment lovers’ wonder that is Grand Designs (especially when it comes to #ohKevin). That and seeing Malcolm Farnsworth, and lately, @mishaschubert, #tweetlikemalcolmtucker.

As in real life, if I’m having a conversation with someone, I address them first – not in the middle of a sentence. If it’s a conversation I’d prefer to have alone, I use DM.

7/. Twitter superstar, that is what you are …

I will take quality over quantity any day. There are no kings and queens of Twitter. Apply a pub test. I follow and tweet people I’d like to have a beer with (or water, coffee, whatever). If you’re so far up your own arse that you retweet praise from your boss or a #FollowFriday recommendation, get over yourself. Say thank you, to that person – don’t broadcast it or include everyone else in the #FF.

Another pet peeve? Tweeps who do not credit a source when tweeting news, someone else’s opinion or factoids. It’s not hard. If you have nothing to add, RT so your followers know where you got the information. If you’re amending the tweet for space reasons, use MT. If you’re rewriting the tweet but using the same source (I do this quite a lot when linking to articles) use ‘via’. Chances are you didn’t break the news, write the story or publish the opinion, so give credit where it’s due (including the publication if the writer doesn’t have a personal account). It will also cover your arse if the report is wrong.

Oh, for the record, I’m not Malcolm Turnbull’s sister. I #tweetlikemalcolmtucker. If you’ve never seen Peter Capaldi’s performance in ‘The Thick of It’ or ‘In the Loop’, I am fangirling a fictional character and taking the piss out of my profanity-fuelled, political media adviser past.

8/. Abuse & criticism

I’ve dished it out big time, but I don’t think (feel free to correct the record) I’ve ever trolled someone for no reason. I have a very quick temper which nearly cost me a very good friendship with @prestontowers (this is after we’d met) until he reached out to me and I realised what a stupid bitch I’d been. That’s the mark of a friendship, one forged online and strengthened in person.

I know I shit a lot of people to tears. I tweet a lot, I’m opinionated, obstinate and not half as amusing as I think I am; however, I believe you can disagree with people on Twitter without resorting to thinking people are stupid. I’m political, but I hold a lot of contrary opinions to people who I really enjoy interacting with, and increasingly, bonding with people I would never have thought possible (like @markatextor – intro’d to me by @Drag0nista). There are also times when people I don’t know will say something about a tweet I sent the day before and I react badly. I have to learn to walk away from the keyboard more often. If I believe so strongly in something that I’ll hold my ground, look for flaws in logic or ask whether you’ve pulled that one out of your arse because I believe in critical thinking. Change my mind, convince me, recommend something to read / watch / learn more about. It’s different to criticism or calling someone an idiot, sell-out or whatever else because they don’t share your view, especially if it’s slavishly party political. I’ve taken to calling Twitter ‘Twittargh’ – & last week tweeted that I’d like to see more of the ‘Twit’ and less of the ‘aargh’.

9/. The great unhinging

I have completely lost the plot on Twitter a few times. It’s never pretty. It’s generally when I’m unwell, or drunk – sometimes a combination. It’s a pretty feeble excuse for some of my behaviour; I would like to be seen on Twitter as in real life, not a special case because I am treated for borderline personality and anxiety disorders. Unfortunately, and hurtfully for the people around me (in real life and on Twitter), there are times when my behaviour is incredibly challenging and difficult to watch. If you know me well enough to DM me, tell me to get off twitter for my own good and that of others. If you don’t, tell me in public but try and understand that I may switch from bolshy and nasty to fearful and anxious very quickly. I don’t like asking for help as a walking, talking person (or online) – it’s another aspect of the crazy. If I do, I will try via DM. It’s not always a bad thing. It’s realising, actually admitting weakness; a huge thing for me. It does not mean that I’m going to hurt myself. If I see other people hurting, I try to support them in private – via DM.

I’ve only felt truly threatened on Twitter once. A politician didn’t take kindly to me cracking a joke about his footballing knowledge. Several days later, he (or a staffer), tweeted: ‘does your boss know what you tweet about?’. It was retweeted by a prominent journalist, prefaced as a political stoush. It wasn’t. It was about football! A journalist I’d never interacted with poured some more scorn on, said I swore a lot. Yes, I do. Mostly followed by #tweetlikemalcolmtucker. Then another journalist called me on my private number because they wanted to run a story on it. By this time I was hysterical, in fear of losing my job over what I saw as an innocuous joke – I wasn’t abusive. I begged them not to do write anything. To their credit, they didn’t pursue the story.

10/. Pseudonymity

I was in a position where setting up a pseudonymous account would probably have been a smarter option, but I didn’t think about it. People have very good reasons for not revealing their names – it may affect their employment, their families, impinge on their freedom to write what they like. For others, I don’t get it. If your sole aim is to abuse other people for their opinions, or who they are, have the guts to put your name to it.

11/. It’s not you, it’s me

The issue that never fails to make me set my hair on fire about Twitter is when I receive the, ‘you tweet about XX too much’ tweet. This is invariably when I tweet about sport. I realise this leaves a lot of people cold; so when I’m about to tweet a Swans away game or a ball-by-ball account of a Test match, or cycling, I give a warning, two, sometimes three, letting people know that there’s going to be one topic happening for the next few hours about something they really hate, or don’t want clogging their timeline, I send it out, which offers people the opportunity to unfollow (and, I hope, come back) or put a filter on the hashtag. I think this is polite and mirrors what I would do with my friends: share an interest (obsession) with people I would speak to these things about. The one thing I do not, and will never do, is send other people whiney messages about what they choose to tweet because I don’t relate to it – such as their children, their culinary talents or technology. I follow people based on the totality of what they choose to tweet. It’s a reflection of who you are – or the facets of your personality you choose to put out there. Others have suggested that I create separate accounts for my different interests. That would involve me splitting myself in eleventy ways.

12/. One more thing …

Perhaps the greatest gift Twitter has presented me is the courage to write. I started a blog, and this year, was published for the first time on @ABCthedrum … maybe not such a big deal, but I’m still proud of it, mostly because of the reaction I got from friends who didn’t know I write. Thanks, Twitter. It’s been (un)real. Here’s to 2012.

The fighter

“I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people’s accomplishments.

The front page has nothing but man’s failures.”

Earl Warren, 14^th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America

This post is dedicated to the memory of Joe Frazier, the Olympic and world champion boxer, who died this week, the first man to defeat Muhammad Ali in ‘the fight of the century’ in the year of my birth. It will come as no surprise to anyone who follows me on Twitter, or reads this blog, or has ever had a conversation with me, that I love sport. My interest in some has diminished over time, while others have grown into obsessions. Some loves, however, are constants: cricket and the round ball game, soccer, football, call it what you will.

Let me be clear: I am an armchair sports fan par excellence. I cannot run out of sight on a dark night, as my Dad would say; and my body attests. In a family where generations of sporting trophies were displayed throughout homes, my contribution is a small silver-plated medal: dux of my primary school, 1983. I readily admit to envying the seeming ease with which my father played tennis ambidextrously and went to the beach every morning to run and swim, big night before regardless; my brother competing at state and national level in multiple individual sports; a sister who rowed surfboats.

I may not have won the dust-gathering trophies, but I love that as a gangly girl who could bowl overarm, I was always picked to play Joel Garner in caravan park cricket. It was the ultimate icebreaker with kids I met across India in 2007. I love a day at the races, wearing hats and watching horse and jockey round the straight; I cherish the many nights spent stalking angles on the pool table of my local in East Dulwich, London. My hands clasped together, involuntarily as a Sydney Swan lines up for a shot at goal, the involuntary ‘YEEEES!’ as I leap and cheer from the O’Reilly Stand; the joy of watching a perfectly-delivered cross headed past the keeper (unless the keeper is Mark Schwarzer); the tension, ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ of a long rally in a Grand Slam final.

Whenever an Arts Minister trots out the statistic that more Australians attend a ‘cultural’ institution each year than a sporting match, I wince. Who decreed sport is not cultural? Is it not a slight twist in our colonial kowtowing to label as philistines those Australians visiting Mother England who choose the Theatre of Dreams over the Old Vic? I don’t believe sport has to be an either / or – even an ‘and’; love it, loathe it, let one, another or all leave you cold. It doesn’t have to be The Ashes versus Ashkenazy; Cadel winning the Tour de France or a tour de force by Cate. Why are people confounded by others’ enjoyment of some, or all of these things, and more? People who watch the boxing documentary, When We Were Kings may also think of the detritus of a State left by an unhinged dictator; those who read For Whom The Bell Tolls might learn more about the complex rivalry between Barcelona and Real Madrid (it’s not all Republican vs Nationalist); we can mourn Ayrton Senna, not only for his brilliance on the F1 track, but for his philanthropy; we remember the image of St Kilda’s Nicky Winmar lifting his guernsey, pointing to his brown skin, defiant in the face of overt racism, just as we celebrate Charles Perkins and the Freedom Riders for returning to Moree, unbowed, after being denied entry to its public swimming pool, forcing council to lift the 40-year-old ban.

… so I reach, in a not-so-neat segue, back to Joe Frazier, and his great rival, Ali. Then Cassius Clay, Ali threw his Olympic gold medal in the Ohio River after being refused service in a restaurant and seemed to throw his career away when he refused induction into the United States army. Reviled and admired for his overt protest, Ali symbolised the ‘Black Power’ zeitgeist. Less loquacious than Ali, Frazier lobbied for his right to box to be reinstated; and refused to contest Ali’s championship belt after it was stripped from him for saying no to Uncle Sam in 1967. Imagine the hatred, the hurt burnished into ‘Smokin Joe’s’ heart when ‘The Greatest’ called him an ‘Uncle Tom’, at a press conference before their ‘Thrilla in Manilla’ fight. Ali, whose words were as powerful as his punch, wanted Frazier to be seen as the ‘white man’s boxer’. It was a low point in a personal enmity between two men raised in the segregated South and a deeply political one, more impactful than the inanity passed off as political comment today.

One final tribute. On learning of Frazier’s passing, another of his great fighting foes, George Foreman, simply tweeted:

Good night, Joe Frazier. I love you dear friend.

Poetry, in less than 140 characters, from a man who was integral to the, ‘apex of pedigree fighting in which each man would not give an inch until they were dead.’ ~ Mike Tyson.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate.

Hubert Humphrey

This is a cropped image taken (stolen) from the Herald-Sun’s #occupymelbourne gallery. I was flicking through, & this poster caught my attention. I flicked back & forth & still ended up at the same image.

Why? Because it speaks to me so loudly of everything that I find disturbing about the occupy movement as it exists in Australia. No economics or factoids in this post. Purely visceral.

Firstly, an apology to #occupysydney participants for not fully understanding why the camp was established outside the Reserve Bank of Australia. I was hammering away, railing inside my head & on Twitter as to why camp hadn’t been set up in Bridge Street (drunken aside: #occupybs would be a cool hashtag) given it’s home to the ASX? I asked a question on Twitter tonight (depending on how quickly I write this, maybe last night) and, thanks to @hailants, I learned something. Securency. I thought polymer notes were just a cool invention. I asked politely, genuinely, & I got a polite, genuine, informative answer about something I knew nothing about. That’s pure gold to me.

OK, so back to the poster. This is so fucking far from pure gold to me it’s not funny. Starving African child juxtaposed with obese Western kids eating junk food. Seems like everything capitalism, everything wrong, everything #occupy represents. Not to me.

I am in no way accepting of how totally fucked it is that gross poverty, is delivered in white 4WDs to the Global South by, yes capitalism, but also inept, corrupt governments & non-state actors. The answer (according to me) to a fraction of that starving African child’s problems is not the carte-blanche, lazy finger-pointing at evil capitalism. It is pathetic infrastructure. It is more expensive to transport food to famine-declared areas from a food bowl IN Africa than it is to ship food aid from Europe. As this Massachusetts Institute of Technology project contends, it is only through global actors such as the World Bank that intra- and inter-country roads in Africa can be built and maintained (the example it uses is the Mombassa – Nairobi road project in Kenya). People in sub-Saharan Africa starve not because there is no food, but because transportation costs are so high, making them aid dependent, and if the greedy Global North cannot be arsed, they die. Dambisa Moyo’s seminal work, Dead Aid may not be popular, but her central thesis, that cutting aid will force these capitalist solutions to take hold, is worth study. I do not agree with cutting foreign aid; but I would play with the idea and put forward the following solution – that the member states which signed up to lift aid to 0.77 per cent of GDP under the UN Millennium Goals – make that abysmal fraction higher, and invest in an infrastructure fund that will assist in building transportation routes and enable, empower the most impoverished to trade with their neighbours. It’s a capitalist solution to a problem that exists, that is so obvious, that for the life of me, I cannot understand.

Next: is this problem assisted by a poster in Melbourne? No. Bring forth the person in, Melbourne, or my Sin City of Sydney, this city of 4.5 million, who is not aware, that somewhere in the world, people are starving. Seriously, I will travel to them, I will jam my foot in their front door  & show them this poster if I am wrong. People know famine exists; they may not understand why, beyond natural causes such as drought; but we know it happens. Forgive me, Occupiers, but where are your solutions, where are your ideas, to fixing this unnecessary, base evil, ill? Capitalism Isn’t Working? It’s not an idea; it’s a statement of questionable fact. There is no attempt to make a constructive argument; it’s not even a talking point memo. Where, in the general assemblies or working groups, are the solutions? I know what the problem is. I’m disgusted by it. I’ve been to Dharavi, one of the world’s largest slums. I’ve seen poverty in South London, where I worked in social housing; in Gaza; in Russia; in Redfern – none of which this poster represents – barring one teeny, tiny thing. The fat kids. The ultimate representation, the tool to demonstrate, about the greedy Global North. Shyeh, right on.

Yep, the fat kids eating junk food. What greater depiction of corporate greed could you imagine? Oh, I can. Teeny, tiny mind of mine suggests that the kiddies sat at the Golden Arches of the capitalist piggery of the Global North, are the the poorest percentile, those totally dependent on welfare; the kids who grow up in households where generational unemployment is a fact of life … these kiddies, the fat capitalist pigs gorging on the fries – they are the 99 per cent. Not you, not even me, with my multitude of fucktardness visited, uninvited, on my childhood. Fact: poor families sacrifice, or cannot afford, fresh fruit and vegetables. They eat fried food. They have less playing space. They are the children whose life expectancy is slashed; who will develop NCDs (non-communicable diseases) such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. They will die earlier, their lives straining public health systems in between. They will, on average, not go to university. They won’t make these posters & camp in Martin Place or City Square, because they have never fucking been to Martin Place. They are in our rural and regional centres. They are on the fringes of our cities & at there epicentres. They do not regularly attend school. They are supplied with breakfast & taught how to read by the best of the 99 per cent – our under-valued teachers. These are the children Occupiers need to speak to; not Twitter twats like me. These children are growing up poorer than any of us – not in terms of disposable income, the measurable, cold, economic indicators I have written about before but under-educated, not even disengaged. They are the scorn of our ‘current affairs’ programming. Fringe-dwellers, regardless of race. The underclass. The illiterate and innumerate. The kids who set London on fire while we, the lucky 99 per cent of the Land of Oz sat here and watched. Rail against quantitative easing, #occupysydney … give me a small break while I imagine an austerity package, two or three, visited upon us. The truly frightening thing is that these children are not the stereotypical fat, unruly progeny of Macquarie Fields, or Fitzroy Crossing, or Frankston: they are the middle classes of  the BRICs, especially China and India. There are 78 million Indians with Type 2 diabetes. To work these most basic health issues through, we – who are not the 99 per cent – must get off Martin Place and reach Mumbai. Indians don’t see themselves as victims of capitalism. Indians thrive on trade; not just now, but through the ages. They live in a post-colonialist, still caste-ridden and religiously-divided country. They are more powerful than this lazy portrait, the Indians, South Americans, South Africans, Russians than our piss-poor democracy can imagine.

OK, I am drunk, and tired and I have ranted and railed more than enough for the early hours. Please leave a comment or tweet me about what this poster says to you. I am a cranky old woman, sure; but I genuinely want to know, in more than a cut and paste about how we are controlled by the banks, the media, the corporations and politicians, just what this poster represents. I want more of you,from you, as the individuals who claim to make up the 99 per cent. Agree, disagree; just don’t ignore. Oh, and don’t bash the people you have so long admired for kicking against the pricks of the right, and laughed at the idiocy of the Convoy of No Confidence. If you believe that Wayne Swan is going to chuck a Tony Abbott and stand in front of an ‘occupy buildings, abolish gaols’ banner, you are sorely mistaken. Barack Obama is endorsing #ows in his cool, pragmatic style. He wants to save his presidency by appealing to his base. End of Politics 101. Time for bed. Like this, loathe me, just think about it. Please.