The Kids

I have a new phone Sony Ericsson K800i which is the best phone I've ever had. I realised it was a seriously clever little piece of technology when it rang me up, told me I had a new email and proceeded to read it to me. Ten years ago I wouldn't have known what an email was. I chose the phone because it has the best camera, 3 megapixels whatever that means, and so there will be no more blurry poor quality pictures like the one above. One of the guys at work was telling me they shot the whole Olympics on 2 megs and to have a phone like that in a camera is really quite astonishing. It also means moving on from Picasa, which I've always had trouble with. Almost everytime I choose a picture the whole thing collapses; half the time it collapses before I can manage to blog one of the pictures. Anyway, I'm going through what pictures are in the system and this is one of them.

The kids, overnight it seems, have turned into teenagers. You wouldn't get them playing on the swings in the local park anymore; well probably not. If the radio deviates from Nova 96.9 they regard it as a serious lapse in taste. One minute they're having a serious basically adult conversation with you; and the next they're running breakneck through the park with the dogs snapping at their heels. I have the exes sausage dog in the house at the moment, one of those situations, would you just mind Estie for a couple of days; and a month later she is still there. The most annoying and useless animal I have ever come across. The laziest dog on the planet. It rolls from the couch to the floor, waddles outside to eat, and that is it. If you lock it outside it sits at the back door and cries and cries and cries; it doesn't matter how long you leave it or how often you yell at it. But the kids love it.

I've been off sick for a week, well not on sick pay, I took a week's holiday at short notice; and today is the first day back. It's been nice just being able to potter around the house; do the dishes and get the laundry done, just act like a normal person. Now it's back in the saddle, in servitude, spilling words for another master. The radio show is now all organised, with a new bloke doing the web, and it's been good to have time to get that done as well. That's one achievement of the week off. We had the big meeting with Glen yesterday out at the Moorebank Sports Club. It was awkward, we were basically ripping the site off him; but it couldn't go on anymore. We were being seriously held up; and now the future looks much brighter in that regard; news tickers and calendars and running the news letters. It will be a big step forward; we hope; towards world domination. And while the kids know nothing; or echo the sneers of their mother; the program has quietly become the most successful community radio web site in Australia.


NEWS:

Suddenly, after the last terror scare in Britain and the discovery that many of them were homegrown, there is a spate of opinion pieces questioning the creed of multiculturalism; which has essentially been the state religion in Australia for the past 20 years.

Here's a couple of examples of the new questioning:

Simon Nixon, a writer for The Spectator, The Australian and others:

Britain's loss of nerve is one of the main reasons it has become a global centre of Islamic extremism. For decades, successive British governments have regarded multiculturalism as an article of faith. The idea that Britain should become a joyous melting pot of different cultures and religions living side by side in mutual toleration and respect is a noble vision. But it's not working out that way. Instead, the benefits of immigration are being lost through a failure to control numbers and a reluctance to pursue policies that might promote integration. As a result, Britain has a huge Muslim population, much of which is increasingly alienated from mainstream society. "Londonistan" is no longer just a safe haven for foreign extremists. Today, it nurtures home-grown terrorists, many born in Britain, educated at British schools and attending British universities.

So why do young Muslims embrace terrorism rather than democratic politics? How can people born and educated in Britain feel so alienated from its culture and values? The snag is that many never fully engage with British culture and values. Muslims make up the majority in many towns and in most big cities there are large Muslim enclaves. Even if the multiculturalists were to change their minds on the need for integration, it would be too late. Muslim leaders are demanding more separation from mainstream society, not less.

They want bank holidays for Muslim festivals and sharia law courts to rule on family matters. They may well get it. They are helped by the remarkable ambivalence of the liberal Left towards British culture and values: to Christianity, British history, free markets and free trade.
Above all, the Left is deeply suspicious of the institutions in which those values are embedded, starting with the family and extending via churches, schools, businesses, clubs, right through to parliament and the monarchy. To the Left, Britain's social institutions are bastions of privilege that must be remodelled or destroyed to make way for multiculturalism. The resulting cultural war has left British society brutalised and infantilised, and wide open to attack.