Holden means a shaky deal to Elizabeth

Last week Holden announced that it would sack 1400 workers from its Elizabeth factory.

Most of these come from the third shift that was added a couple of years ago. I remember seeing that story on TV a while back, and a newly recruited 18 year old said that he wouldn't mind if he worked there for his whole life.

Sorry.

Positions at Holden are good things to have in a place like Elizabeth that is otherwise pretty crappy. They are full time, quite highly paid and have all sorts of conditions, allowances and god knows what else that have been won by decades of beligerant industrial action. Next to Opel employees in Germany (Who have also had some quite alarming cutbacks), the Elizabeth workforce is said to be the most expensive GM workforce in the world.

This announcement is obviously quite horrible for the 1400, who have played all the games and done all that was asked of them while they were there only to be sent packing. On the other hand it is logically untenable to keep employing people to build large cars that will sit unsold due to rising fuel prices.

As this partcular oil crisis was caused by fairly predictable Chinese demand, not by arabs and Americans taking turns in being cunts, I would say that whoever is doing the forecasting at Holden needs to be given the boot as well.

Either way, our generation hit the workforce after the mass layoffs and restructuring that tore the guts out of the manufacturing industry in the '80s. Some of the people laid off then were told twenty years prior that they would have jobs for life and they had reason to believe it. They (Quite justifiably) felt betrayed.

Nobody today should believe that they will be working in the same place for their whole career. While even a job in a precarious vehicle manufacturing sector is a good thing to have in the short term, setting anchor there is not a wise thing to do. Holden makes this easy, as very little is learned there that is transferable outside of a heavily unionised mass production environment.

Self reliance is a great thing to have in theory, but very few people encourage this in practice.

Left out in the cold.

I was surprised last year when both John Howard and George Bush were re-elected. I wanted to know why the intellectually superior left couldn't beat them and I think I do now.

The Left doesn't have any friends.

In theory, Left wing politics does not sympathise with the rich and the powerful- preferring to focus on the common man (Or common person- to be gender neutral.) The problem with this is that they don't seem to know how to deal with this common human when they find him/her.

In the 1996 federal election that saw Labor lose government, a woman by the name of Pauline Hanson won the Queensland seat of Oxley. Her controversial, and at times simplistic views on immigration made her an enemy of the left from day one. Pauline Hanson's views were simplistic and she didn't articulate them very well either. Much of what she said could be killed by logically picking at it on its merits.

This was not the strategy used by left wing commentators at the time. Instead they sneered at her for being a fish and chip shop owner. They made fun of her nervousness and slip ups in interviews. In one move they hurt and antagonised small business operators, factory workers and people who had not finished high school. She may have been expressing bigoted and incendiary sentiment, but she was expressing their bigoted and incendiary sentiment.

Anyone still in doubt about who Pauline Hanson represented should consider this: The CEO of Coles-Myer was not worried about Asians taking his job. Nor, for that matter were journalists and academics in fear of losing theirs. That fear was irrational, but there are people who had it and people who didn't. Those who had it weren't going to be won over by having their advocate dismissed as an idiot.

Leftists do need to be honest with themselves. They only like the common man when Marx is talking about him. They don't like him when he's at the Clipsal 500.

When he thinks Schapelle Corby is "Innosent", when he watches Big Brother and when he does burnouts in his Commodore he is considered a barely upright oaf. Which, of course he is.

The common man reciprocates this contempt. It's usually somebody from the Left stepping to him about his appetite for meat, or his racist jokes. It will be somebody from the Left who scoffs at his fear of crime and somebody from the Left who wants to fuck with the gender relations in his household.

By comparison he's got an instant talking point with George W. Bush- they both own firearms for a start.

Both the ALP and the US Democrats tailored their policies towards highly educated people who didn't have very much money. That's teachers, students and artists.

Not a wide demographic.

Others, like my father might have put Liberals last because the local Liberal candidate was a thieving harlot. The wonderful, non partisan morality that we shared on that occasion was not enough the lose Liberals the seat, let alone the election.

If the Left wants to get back into government in Australia and the US, it will have to bite its tongue.

It will have to advertise in magazines like New Idea, and it will have to subsidise SMS voting.

Above all, though it will have to remind itself who the commonfolk really are, and it will have to learn how to communicate its agenda without pissing them off.

If it doesn't learn how to make friends it will have to take its bat and ball and go home.

"How was your weekend, sir?" Better than yours, I'd wager.

When a homeless gentleman selling "The Big Issue" asked me about my weekend on Monday, I didn't know quite the right thing to say.

Last Friday I engaged in a horrific drinking binge, during which time I spent more money than that man probably earns in a week of magazine peddling. As a result, most of the weekend was spent feeling like crap. I think I mumbled "I've had better" and he said that he knew the feeling.

Well, of course he does. I'd rather have a (Self inflicted) bad day of educated middle class than a good day of horrible poverty. It's a bit difficult to find a balance between complaining about my good fortune and rubbing his face in it. That said, he was visibly brighter and more enthusiastic than I was. I bought a copy and we said our goodbyes. I think I even said "Have a good day" when I was pretty sure that he wouldn't.

I have a great deal of admiration for the people who sell "The Big Issue" on the street. They stand outdoors all day trying to make a living, in a city where you're either being rained on or burned alive by the sun. They're more polite than I would be if I had to put up with passers by who try their darndest not to make eye contact. See, if you make eye contact with one of these fellows and don't buy what they're selling you feel guilty. Better just to engage the tunnel vision and proceed directly to Gloria Jean's.

I've done that before, it's easier that way. The more you know about the way people live on the street, the harder it is to neatly explain the problem in a conscience saving way.

On the other hand, merely feeling guilty and telling everybody how much you care does not achieve anything more. Compassion is a weakness when it immobilises you with grief. When this happens, you're no use to anybody because you can't act on the thing you supposedly care about.

Buying a copy of "The Big Issue" every fortnight isn't going to save even the dude that you regularly buy it from, but it at least gives you an opportunity to talk to him. You might be the only person that day who has taken an interest in him as a human being. Sleeping rough for the foreseeable future must be a miserable experience that can't be made any better when people treat you like scum.

More material goodness

Marketers don't sell products, they sell solutions.

When I was in training for that godawful job selling security systems they taught me that a nobody buys an 8mm drill bit because they want an 8mm drill bit, they buy one because they want an 8mm hole.

I guess that's fair enough, I don't want a twin-cab ute as much as I want the ability to carry human beings and gas cylinders without the gas meeting the human beings. The product is a means to an end.

This takes on a rather more sinister nature when marketers can divorce the actual product from the whole deal. You don't want Starbuck's, you want "The coffee house experience". You don't want a Porsche 911, you want "The getting laid with gold diggers experience"

Consumer laws in this country, and most other developed countries are tough. Marketers can't get away with lying about what the product is. If they say the car has a 65 litre fuel tank, it had better damn well have a 65 litre tank or else they'll get boned in the ear.

But what if you could find a way around this? What if you could make the consumer no longer care about any practical aspects of the product? Why, you could peddle any ill concieved crap that you choose, just by attaching whatever image takes your fancy on that particular afternoon.

Pay a TV network some cash to have your poorly designed automobile driven by the coolest guy in the TV show- the one who gets all the chicks, doesn't ever have bad days and makes more money than god besides. Advertise this automobile in the ad breaks, get the TV actor to visit dealerships.

This guy has got it all, and the success the car didn't give him was provided in a joint venture between his clothing, his mobile phone and the electrical appliances in his apartment.

I know that if I arrived at a gathering with the latest cool accessory I would be the centre of attention for precisely 1 minute and 55 seconds. Almost 2 minutes of that attention would consist of derogatory comments regarding my sexuality, intelligence and genitalia.

I guess this works for some people if they are idiots and associate with idiots, but even then the image presented might give them expectations of life that could never, ever be met by a consumer durable.

Some credit goes to Gilganixon for a similar blog he wrote 2 years ago.

"Do you...like...stuff?" Yes, I certainly do!

I like my new phone, because it is smaller than my old one, doesn't dick me around and doesn't have anything it doesn't need (Like one of those irritating, superfluous and fragile joystick things).

What it does have is CDMA coverage and a single point battery charger that makes a solid connection every time.

I like trees, because they look nice and perform several useful functions for free. Many humans have trouble performing even one useful function, and usually charge through the nose for it.

Other things:

Old furniture. If we can't have old growth in a forest anymore, I 'd at least like some in my living room.

Gospel music, coffee and a greasy breakfast the morning after a night on the sauce.

Books, specifically those not written by entreprenuers.

Chainsaws.

Toyota Landcruisers with lights and sirens on the roof.

Really. Expensive. Suits.

Driving in wet weather.

Firearms, and the environmental good that can be achieved with same.

...and many other things besides.