Hung over in New South Wales...is there summat to learn following the state election-28 March 2015*

Hung over in New South Wales...is there summat to learn following the state election-28 March 2015*

NSW: The state of nothing

As the doost settles on Sunday it is obvious brand Labor (under Luke Foley) has taken a tonking. Now a 10% swing to Labor should be a good thing but not in this election, this political climate and that Labor were rebuilding on the scorched earth result of 2011-where they took a hiding for corruption and taking for granted the very electoral marrow they were set up to serve.

Smiling down in Canberra
-not hopeless now you left wing scum

Did Labor take for granted the Abbott factor would help sleepwalk them to victory? (The Bill Shorten approach). If so, the raft of Federal changes leading up to the NSW state election should have been a warning to get out and do some old style campaigning (and not the photo ops-depressingly similar between Labor and the Coalition (National/Liberals). I expected better from Luke Folley-who although a recent step-up to leadership-looked a promising breath of fresh air in his approach to a range of issues-but no passion, delivery, or fire in the belly. Its like Labor lack belief or faith in their electorates. In some areas, West Sydney, were they even listening to people? Seems not. Look closely at Mr Foley's result in Auburn- a 4% swing to the Liberals. Wake Up People! 

Two issues dominated the state wide concerns. Privatisation (poles and wires) and environment (seam gas/fracking/mines). if Lismore and Ballina go with Greens then this should be a wake up call in the regions of the National's heartlands. In the Inner West of Sydney add WestConnex and two possible seats to the Greens (Newtown and Balmain) as Labor did nothing to convince these robust, feral electorates that they opposed big car policies. (The too many cars on the road. I know we will build more car parks-I mean motorways and to use cardiology speak 'and clog up the arteries' policy.) No vision from Labor about making inner city liveable or infrastructure friendly such as through better, more focussed public transport, more green belts-in other words reduce the cars and let the city breathe. Come back the ghost of Tom Uren!

Where are all the indigenous issues gone
Been pushed out to the bush everyone
When will we ever learn...
Not mentioned in this election

And this was the problem for Labor. They don't have a dream. They haven't grasped that this is the time to rebrand themselves to being what they were created to be-a party of the left. They did not build on the community anger about the budget and the Federal (and right wing State governments) arrogance that there mandate was to destroy jobs, work place conditions and privatise everything they could for short term gain, while showing the electorate they too felt the pain by continuing to spend up at large on themselves. (MP/Senator wage increases were not kept to below 1.5%-political functions-some as dodgy as they come are still racking up food and wine bills that would keep the average family in groceries for a year if not two.)

Luke Foley could have spelled out why privatisation does not work and leads to loss of jobs. Because, it is never about delivering a service it is solely about profit and serving up a con job of smoke and mirrors, treating the public like muppets. "You are getting better services because we are competing" (See banks, petrol companies, the telcos and Quantas for reality checks).

Shood have binned the nice man!

Then they were up against Mike Baird-more John Key (NZ right wing prime minister since the dumping of Helen Clarke, not because she was bad but because the electorate was bored with a competent NZ Labour government-go figure) than Tony Abbott. Tefalon and a cleanskin. As someone said this morning, he will give you a nice smile as he fleeces you blind and you may not even realise you have been screwed until you are the only house left in amongst the concrete canyons, enjoying the fresh smells of motorways and thinking how peaceful it is with the jets roaring overhead 24 seven.

Belgo Geordie has a good long think about the state of carrots

So, what to do from here. Hope Labor gets Strathfield. Be prepared for four years of electorally mandated sell offs and big business slurping in the State trough. Casualisation of labour, reductions in penalty rates, and building roads and super development apartment blocks (how about a few more casinos). While we wait for a leader, male or female, with balls to come from the left (like Albo) and states what blind Freddy could see this election "LABOR IS BLOODY DIFFERENT FROM THE TORIES!" Say it loud, say it proud, say it like you mean it and for the sake of future generations, bloody well believe in it.
Thanks to all the comrades who worked so hard to get this show out to the people-for you I wish this had been a better result.

*Belgo Geordie is not allowed to vote given he doos not meet the criteria of being' a member of team Australia

Richard Thompson Live at Sydney Recital Hall Wednesday 11 March 2015...Down Where The Old Folks Roll

Richard Thompson Live at Sydney Recital Hall Wednesday 11 March 2015...with Taras Prodanuik and Michael Jerome

Down where the old folks roll....

Photo from Sydney Herald by Maria Boyadgis*

Richard Thompson has always been a bit of a hero to Belgo Geordie, being as we share some things in a common, sooch as, being' curmudgeons, not compromising, having' a talent for saying' the wrong thing in mixed company and being a bit of a charmer in a leg of lamb sort of way. But then the differences make their mark, Mr Thompson is a formidable talent, a cracking guitarist, a wordsmith with silver pen dipped in mixtures of spleen and compassion with a body of work which stretches back into the misty dawns of the sixties. In other words a man with a very formidable shadow. And despite having populated me i-pod with a rare selection of Thompson Tunes, I had niver had the fortunatcy to be in same room with the man when he did his thing...until tonight that is.

So pullin' up me braces and heading' out the door with me good wife, we took the train into the big smoke to see Mr Thompson strut his stuff. Now this City Recital Hall is a grand kind of place an' the wee girl in the ticket office said don't wander off to the pub mind, as Mr Thompson is on stage prompt on 7.30pm. No support for this man! Wish she had told the rest of the geriatric folk rolling in ten minutes after kick off and as Mr Thompson was belting his way through "I Misunderstood", with the oldies saying' 'scuse me as they crushed me toe with customised waking sticks, SUV walking frames and the occasional wheelchair. I thought they were saying sorry but they were joost saying get out of my way.
Anyway rising above the grumbling and shuffling was the man himself. The first hour was solo with miked up acoustic guitar, beret and a range of songs both well known and new and a good line of the crack between songs. Sea shanties, the rollicking invitation to sing-a-long to "Johnny's Far Away", elbowed in alongside the haunting, beautifully crafted Sandy Denny song "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" and buggered if I know the answer to that meself! But he has a deft touch and it was a beautiful eulogy to his friend and muse too soon gone from this earth. The "1952 Vincent Black Lightening" was reprised down the ghost highway, the faint whiff of scorched leather and oil, notes falling from his guitar in sparks and flashes of spinning headlights; loves redemption at the dying of the light. All too soon the hour was up and it was the break with the slow shuffle, exodus towards the glass of wine with complan chasers.

The second half was electric. Not so much Dylan's parting with folk, more like Neil Young's recent performance. Uncompromising. Unwearied by age, edgy, pushing past the boundaries of the familiar. In short Mr Thompson playing as he wanted and in a way that showed he is no slouch on the axe. Ably supported by a drummer with ants in pants and hands (Michael Jerome) and a bassist (Taras Prodanuik) more in keeping with seventies late punk. And the electrics support medicine man sat in on a couple of songs-nice touch. But Mr Thompson's virtuosity is of the kind rarely seen emerging out of folk. No beardy calling on. he is comfortable across a range of styles. Light touch and thrash. Scouring, bitter-sweet lyrics mixed with homages. Walls of blistering chords alongside hauntingly aching melodies, "Al Bowlly's in Heaven", If Love Whispers Your Name' from "Dream Attic". Vocally he strangles a good song in a hoarse and chewed over style that is uniquely Richard Thompson. And although I preferred the first half, I would not have gone without the second for the breadth of talent displayed and generously shared with an audience gladly sat for a night in the palm of his hand. Sadly, not enough young 'uns were present to learn a thing or two, more is the pity. Again all too soon it was encore time and after playing his entire lexicon, it was home time and blearily, we stumbled and creaked out into the Sydney night sated and savaged. It was grand Mr Thompson and I thank you for that.

 *Dear Ms Boyadgis you are probably a cracking young photographer and I borrowed this image because not only was all permission to take photographs forbidden to us the audience but you, the 'professional' photographer, ran up and down the front of the stage taking yours and it interfered with the first song of each half...therefore consider the use of this image, your intellectual copyright, as a payment for infringing on me enjoyment of "I misunderstood".

Sydney 4 March 2015 Combined Unions March

Charlie Hebdo: Homage to cartoonists murdered for daring to draw...

So Much Poison in The World: Bigger than Charlie Hebdo

Just keeps rocking on...

An eighteen year old is alleged to have blown himself up as part of an old world mythical belief, based on the one true sky patriarch, martyrdom and a paradise free of kafir but chokka with personalised (sex slave) virgins. A bright and intelligent mind that believes Malala Yousafzal is a "filthy American prostitute", a "dog'", a "Mutard who deserves the very least 10 bullets in her head." The writing of a child who hopes non-muslims will be shaking in their beds wondering if they will be next to be blown into oblivion by gallant, crusading soldiers of caliphates and other similar cadres.

Read the language for what it is, taste the bile, the vile thoughts that direct this thinking.

But it is the same old, same old-right is might and men thinking they have a right to poison, contaminate and destroy for no better reason than they say it is their right to do so. It is a return to the language of misogyny, auto-de-fe, the inquisition, Nazism, fascism and factionalism of all kinds. It is not and never has been a just cause. Just an excuse to exercise hatred, cruelty and spite against those who are weaker or do not fight back. It is the domain of the bully boys, thugs and cowards thinking they are men rather than posturing lightweights. Who ever encouraged this boy on this path and supported his actions should reflect and hang their head in shame.

Seize the Time: The Story of The Black Panther Party: A Manifesto of Courage

Seize the Time: 

Or the manifesto on how to oppose this racist, capitalist oppression (black) people and other peoples are subjected to.

The 1970 book telling it like it is
If I had to choose ten books which had undue influence on Belgo Geordie, the bairn, this would be one*. I cut my political teeth on this book and went bollocks to "Cider with Rosie" (good book but!) and used Seize the Time  for my 1971 English O level paper (were meant to be novel and so what!), it was still a story and a powerful narrative of what can happen when good men and women take a stand. Not sure why a weedy, white Geordie found this book so profound. But reading back on it, it remains relevant and a call to political action at the most fundamental of levels.  

Recently watching the animated version of the Chicago trial (Hoffman et al) I was reminded how much black America paid a huge price compared to most of the white revolutionaries of that era. Huey Newton stating " I'm standing on my constitutional rights. I'm going to stop you from brutalizing my people". But Huey and Bobby and others were targeted and brutalised. Why did the other defendants not take a stand when Bobby Seale was shackled and gagged during the Chicago trial? These were watershed moments where key white political activists did not stand up to be counted. Bobby Seale was jailed for four years at the end of this trail for contempt of court when all he was doing was asking his right to represent himself. And this schism of injustice still resonates through America and the world today. 

Polemics aside, look at what Bobby Seale was expressing in this book through his writing; Breakfasts for children, soup kitchens for the poor and needy and free education as a means of gaining literacy and freedom. Does that still not resonate? And the Black Panthers were better in the equality of women domain than the Hippy/Yuppies who treated women like shag machines under the guise of free love. 

It was easy to be sucked into the leather jackets, the black gloved raised fist, sunglasses and guns-then later the drug appetites and miss what this was about. Newton's principal to stand up for basic human rights. The right not to be harassed, the right to challenge being treated as unequal because of the colour of your skin, to stand against the principal be condemned by birth to have to struggle to access good education, a healthy diet, meaningful work and a life based on autonomy and respect. The pressure put on the Black Panthers would have crushed most of us as flat as a milk bottle top but most of these people stood up and although some cracked, don’t let it take away from the message. We all have a right to basic things in life. Reflect on that with our current love of consumerism produced by sweat labour, our shallow media of ten second sound bites, imagery out of context. We the majority in the developed world still get by on the dispossession of the many. This book written during 1960- 1970 is still relevant today. Seize the time Bobby Seale-you were a courageous and forthright man and I for one, honour you to this day. 

*Bugger! Allreet, Me Family an' Other Animals was another

Bust the budget march Sydney July 2014

"BUST THE BUDGET "                            
From Little things Big things grow*, the people's anger on the streets of Sydney       

It is the people of the land

SYDNEY 6 JULY 2014

On a beautiful, sunny Sydney Sunday, the police suggest about 6000 people turned up to the "Bust The Budget" rally in George Street. Hmmm...must have been before the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA-here to stay!) arrived...anyhow yon police with pencils and pads counting; keep your day jobs, it may not yet be your time to branch out into mathematics. Belgo Geordie, using fingers on two hands counted 15,323 marchers and fifteen dogs and one man in a grey/silver suit from ASIO.

Town Hall Square was a mass of colour, banners, all ages-representing that cross section of Australian society still driven by decency.

It is about what we leave her generation

Good on the combined unions sounding the battle charge. As ever, the speakers were mixed but mostly inspiring. The indigenous woman brought some fire and brimstone-rightly acknowledged because our indigenous communities will wear the brunt of all of these changes. A matter of fact analysis from the NSW Nurses and Midwives Union on the state of the health sector and the Coalition's impending slash and burn. It was good to hear the students were being activated. The plight of welfare and carers was a moving call to stand for the rights who cannot speak for themselves but will be marginalised by the impending changes. The last speaker fired up and reminded us of the combined power of the unions.

However, "Bust the Budget" must seem like a good rallying cry for some in the union hierarchy but there is a much darker heart to this matter; as was picked up by a number of speakers and expressed in banners, placards and the conversations of those attending.

   

This is a return to class war. A cruel and relentless attack on core values. It has touched a nerve in people about what makes a fair and just society. The budget is a symptom, but it is not the sum total of the disease currently attacking our society. This march was on a day when Morrison is still keeping stum about boats being "stopped" or worse handed back to Sri Lanka. Manus Island is still a prison. Refugees and migrants are still being demonised.

  
When a government tells working people they have to make sacrifices they do so by employing spin doctors to sell the message that "we" are living beyond our means. As mining companies, banks and businesses use creative accounting and offshore transfers to avoid paying tax; while shedding more jobs because the cost of labor in Australia is too expensive. Then they wring their poor rich hands and say they can't afford to pay tax, wages, carbon (or pollution) tax and if we the people don't like it-then they will take their business away! Greed is good, is it not?

I cannot begin to imagine life without Gina and Clive, can you? Then you have old men in suits in Canberra, who benefited and continue to benefit from a welfare state, tell our youth their future is one of excessive debt, limited access to quality education, health, housing, and more importantly; meaningful work. Abbott, so wedded to Mother England he wants a return to the class system of privilege and divine rule and divide and rule.

Come on kids know your place

In other words, the children of wealth will be all right because they (their parents) will be able to afford private education, university and have the old boys network to get them into jobs at the big end of town. All others can be thrown to compete on the scrap heap of casual labour. Practice tugging your forelock and if you are female, not being seen let alone heard.

And for those currently disadvantaged such as our indigenous people, those with disability, old, sick, homeless, heading towards us in a leaky boat dreaming of a better future; they have no place in Tony Abbott's vision for Australia. For the record Tone, what will you do with us. Reservations? Detention Centres?...

The message is clear. It is not just this budget. It is the ideology driving it. It is a small minority dictating terms under the pretence they achieved a mandate in the last election. Rather than the reality, they cashed in on the electorates disillusion with Labor and took advantage of Murdoch's  24/7 media hatchet job; presenting his poisoned view of the world as news!

People have woken up and in marches such as these will not be taken for the fools politicians think the electorate is. I am proud of the people who marched today, who spoke, who stood up for something more than just what they could get for themselves. They are the people Mr Abbott and you would do well to take note!

Justice now...

* With thanks to Mr Kev Carmody, you are the man...and if you have not heard Mr Carmody's music-check it out, he is one our great poet troubadours and speaks from the heart.

Art and politics and politics and art: the 19th Biennale Sydney 2014

The Belgo Geordie casts his shadow on Art.... 

Now I can be accused of talking shite from time to time, an' fair call an all. But given the discussion leading into the 2014 Sydney Biennale took on a whiff of politics, I sat up and took notice. Coming out of an election with a right wing landslide, the first people still not recognised and Clive Palmer driving to the Parliament in his Rolls Royce, you might think the role of politics was no longer under the tea-cosy but about to hit the ground running in places where the chip papers from Occupy once stained the concrete pavements of Sydney's streets.

Now young Belgo Geordie was a bit of a dab hand at art when he was a nipper. More pitman painter than yon John Constable. As an old Belgo Geordie I've walked the boards and disturbed the dust of many galleries and peered and squinted meself to a standstill. There's a bald patch on the side of me head from a fair bit of scratching'. So I think this gives me the right t' say me piece. But this pontification is only my opinion, subjective, influenced by those forces that shaped me. What you imagine you desire indeed. The religious sisters have a lot to answer for.  I understood this was about "space-theoretic typology involving spatial and perspectival features." I heard the installations were so many" theatres for the staging of arguments."  Belgo Geordie's meat and drink, the meaningless but heated misuse of words to make a point and bore people blind. I was prepared to go out and do my bit in the Great War of Art.

Stand back...there is nothing going on here

Love playin' wall shadow..me rabbit

This installation (on left) was bloody clever. Carriageworks is a place where trains were put together in those far off days when there was a thing called work. Hundreds of people laboured in-between these brick walls, countless trades, tools down, smokos and on pay days; crisp new notes and some coin, delivered in a small sealed envelope. So it was right canny to find it gutted and showing not a sign of labour having gone on here. Not even the lingering smell of oil and solder disturbed this big echoing silent vault; this shrine representing the stolen dreams of working men and women made redundant by the selling off and closing down of industry. Their pie and chip farts relegated, like the over brewed tea needing six sugars; to posterity or industrial theme parks like this...More banks anyone?

Belgo Geordie
looking at a wall
while some bugger's left their TV on

An hour later. none the wiser

Little house in the car park

In a darkened room, I met someone who knew summat about struggle. Sure he had seriously deranged eyes and a disturbing ability to melt into shades of black and grey! He was a four sided quest for self analysis and paralysed by something outside of his control.

We both agreed having an endless loop of Tom Cruise running towards you was a bridge too far for fragile, budding artistic (of the installation kind) sensibilities. I tipped my hat to him as I left my pardner to carry on his lonely discourse on spatial and visual angst, summit about never finding your tail no matter how hard you chased.


Then there was a work that from a distance looked like the big top without tent and not much of a circus. But it was interesting in a post-consumerist and 'who pulled the plug, and is anyone left to care' kind of way. Of course it might have been a promo for the Football World Cup. A massive, brilliant protest at the wadge of cash that could have been spent on meaningless infrastructure like schools, hospitals, public transport and the like. Phish! Bloody artists eh!

What impressed itself on me is the number of installations requiring a telephone directory sized manual to explain the artist's...well whatever it was that moved 'em to do what they did based on a history of previous installations and other concepts of modern society going down the nettie in a hand cart...or not. Now I can read a book and I have been known from time to time to say summit clever. But even with reading glasses and turning my head sideways and looking intellectually puzzled, I was left all too often thinking "is that so". Like I was a product leaving Woolies just haven' me bar code read and my cultural bank savings emptied of a wad of hard earned cultural knowledge. Was I fed? Was I bugger!

Cheeseburger in paradise installation

I found a collective of cinemas. One showing something about New York. The Great Gatsby without content. In another I went in mid film; it were about two guys living and working around Chernobyl. It was slow train wreck sort of stuff. They knew the radiation was high, it might be killing them, but being young alpha males they were shrugging it off with an ample supply of spirits and living the good life (as they saw it) preferring the eerie abandoned, quarantined areas where life and ghosts hang together. But when do docos become art and art become nothing much? Some of the other features shown were exercises in the ability to sit still and not fidget that Belgo Geordie hasn't done since little 'uns school.

Aye I dragged myself back up to the surface and the lights of Redfern where it occurred to me Carriageworks had been almost spookily empty. Art 1 the People 0.

And the people's choice, the winner is....The first piece that made an impression on me was this installation outside Redfern Railway Station. So I set up me deck chair, loosened me laces and braces, lit me pipe and had a good think about what the artist was trying to say. From their self portrait I noted they had joost the one finger and eye brows in need of a meeting with some clippers.
It was the first overt political statement, the sluggish blood thickened in my tired veins. Like treacle in a bucket. Across town to the Art Gallery of New South Wales,  or NSWAG where another part of the Biennale was hiding out amongst the other exhibitions. Such as "The Treasures From Paul Keatings Pockets".

Other chaps on the way to Biennale

Best use of drinkin' straws Form 3 exhibit

Finding the Biennale stuff was a bit of a challenge, somewhere down where the toilets are and had I looked up....but like the man in the photograph, I was too busy admiring the layout of the flooring, which is why 

I wandered my way into another exhibition and needed an aspirin, a sit down and some dark glasses.

                                       

It was near lunch time and being a vegetarian I found Rosa's kitchen...

Then thought mabe not...Then a whole row of people had taken their kit off and indulged in a bit of body art. There was a representation of Geordie Man:

At the Gallowgate end an' joist gone three up against Sunderland

But Deborah Kelly's work "No Human Being Is illegal" was collaborative and multi-cultural. Politics through the participatory process. Life sized photographs of a range of bodies with and without collage made for interesting viewing. Likewise the audio/visual room at MCA was both soothing and engaging.

So was it worth it? Did politics make an appearance. I would say not. Sure there were canny installations and moments where it were a pleasure to partake. But not enough. And although I went to three different venues at different times, there were bugger all folk there taking it in. The most political action I encountered at the MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) was early on a Saturday morning when staff with nothing better to do than be petty demonstrated rules are to be obeyed without question. One skate-boarding across a vast empty gallery to tell me I had to either carry my back-pack in my hand or strap it to my front. The back pack was small and almost empty. I looked at the few middle class women with their four wheel drive pushchairs and shoulder bags the size of small wardrobes and thought Why? And how this reflect on the spirit of the Biennale? Galleries, places where you behave in a certain way? The cultural churches where we all know and are reminded of our place in the scheme of things. I missed Cockatoo Island and the refugee art project but I also missed the spirit of activism in what I saw.

I reflected on Art and politics and recent events such as the Afghani woman artist in Khandahar, Malina Suliman. Her art work carries a death sentence from those patrons of the art the Taliban but she keeps taking out her spray cans and continues to promote the plight of women, girls and anyone who is not Taliban in Afghanistan. See Patrick Aboud's 3 minute plus documentary "Tagging the Taliban". http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/07/03/feed-tagging-taliban recently there was the bill posting by Peter Drew in Adelaide (June 2014) of drawings and art works made by refugees in the limbo of bridging visas. This brings the discussion to passer's by. And as I walk around Sydney's Inner West, I continue to see a rich diversity of graffiti and slogans that show politics and art are instant, breathing and more evident than the Biennale was able to show.

Just to call something political and provide discourse on ideas on why this is so, does not make it so. Needs fire in the belly and to be aimed at something needing to be exposed/changed-such as the Intervention, such as the Lucky Country for some, our Australia Day mentality which is often another form of colonisation and White Australia for Anglo immigrants like myself. As such it would have been good to see more activism and guerrilla art take possession of this event and God knows there is enough raw material in Australia to create a powerful and effective cultural exchange of ideas, images and dialogue. 

Belgo Geordie does not work for, consult or own shares or receive funding from any multinational, political party or organisation that owns him.