Racy reporting

I'd rather this issue went away in reality, but it hasn't, and it certainly hasn't left the media's attention, with protests and violence in Harris Park today. I'm talking about the attacks in Australian cities on Indian and other foreign students. To my mind, while there are many very disturbing aspects to these events, the most concerning display of racism is in the fact that the issue is receiving the most prominent reporting in the Australian press only now that a minority ethnicity is used to describe the perpetrators of one group of attacks, as well as the victims.

I suspect that many of the attackers - whatever their ethnicity - are, figuratively and sometimes even literally, simply schoolyard bullies who need little excuse, racial or otherwise, to bully. Anti-racism campaigns and other approaches may or may not change their behaviour over time, but the sort of attitude we see in the press all the time serves to create and sustain an environment where ethnic conflict of all sorts can grow.

Westward ho!

At work, we are packing for Parramatta. Or perhaps for the new-look Indian cricket team:

Plus ça change...

A recently silent reader of this blog has complained at the lack of non-cricket related posts. This is one, but I'm not sure it will be any more welcome. A theme of the early days of the blog was that many posts compared "east" and "west" in one way or the other - from the rising of the sun to its setting. In not too long, my office moves from "central" Sydney to the "west". (In purely physical terms, it's more like "east" to "central", but never mind that...) The road linking the west, Parramatta or Penrith, to the city is the M4, but it stops well short. There is talk about extending it underground to the city and then the airport, and some news reports about this have referred to the "marginal seats" of Marrickville and Balmain. How times have changed, and how much difference a few more Green votes has made!

In other political news, we see how much some things never change. The federal opposition is complaining that only Labor parliamentarians are allowed to be part of events associated with stimulus package school infrastructure funding. When they were in government, not having global downturn on their mind, they had a smaller scheme in place - funding a flagpole for any school that didn't have one. Of course, a condition was that a Coalition MP or Senator attend the dedication ceremony. Politicians are politicians.