I had one of those dinner party experiences. 

Everything was going well. The food was good. The wine was good. My dear friends whose house I was at were as hospitable and good natured as ever. Then the the topic of conversation took one of those odd turns. And I found myself listening to someone tell us all about his exploits during the 1981 Springbok Tour. 

A brief history lesson - in 1981 the National government of the highly divisive Robert Muldoon allowed the South African Springbok Rugby team to play in New Zealand. This is in the middle of apartheid. Nelson Mandela is still in gaol. Biko's memory is fresh. In most of the world there are no sporting ties with South Africa; no imports of their wine - a boycott called for by the ANC and respected by much of the world. Because apartheid is a bloody bad thing. Unless you're a New Zealand rugby fan - in which case you buy a patently stupid badge that says "Keep politics out of sport". 

I was only 11 at the time - and even then I could see that there was something deliberately fatuous about the no politics in sport slogan. Politics is in everything. The decisions to invite the team; to allow them to play and then to spend huge amounts of tax-payer money ensuring they played was clearly political. If I could see that as an 11 year old - it was worrying that at least some of the adults around me didn't seem to be able to.

It was a defining moment for me. The massive protests - street battles in fact - showed me the full force that the state is willing to use to defend its interests. It showed the police for what they are - one of the bodies of armed people there to defend capitalism. And it showed that brave, determined people could achieve extraordinary things. When a group of protestors stopped the game at Rugby Park in my home town of Hamilton I felt a swelling of pride in the place I'd never felt before. When they were brutally attacked not just by the police but by Rugby fans at the ground, I felt the shame and horror of what my compatriots were capable of. 

I am not the only New Zealander for whom the events of those weeks drew a line in the sand. I may have only been 11 years old but I knew after weeks of near civil war that the side you were on during the Tour defined who you were as a person. I didn't hear anyone sing Which side are you on? for another ten years - but I understood its sentiment from that time on.

But back to 2021. 

Things started when the chap at the other end of the table regaled us with his opinion of key protest organiser John Minto. Apparently he hates him. "That's interesting." I said. "I worked with John in the teachers union for many years - I always found him humble, hard-working and highly principled." Now you'd think that would be a signal that maybe not everyone at the table agreed. In fact, only a few minutes earlier at least two other people had made it pretty clear which side they had been on - and it wasn't his.

But one of the things I've learned over the years is that people - and most often those people are men - with right-wing views; don't notice that others are subtly disagreeing with them. They live in a world where everyone thinks the same way they do or where their willingness to bully and threaten means others choose to remain silent. 

The tirade at the other end of the table continued. I listened - waiting for someone, anyone, to make some intervention. But no. Instead I got to hear about how he'd personally walked out of a Fish and Chip shop and shoved the meals of some protestors he saw outside off their table. An act of stupid, selfish bullying. I think we were supposed to find it funny. 

But his climatic act and one he told proudly was to have brought with him to one of the rugby games chilli powder in his pocket. Over dinner, we were all told about how he'd thrown it in the eyes of a protestor. In this man's world, that's what passes for dinner party nicities - how I performed a number of acts of violence against people I didn't know who happened to be expressing an opinion different from mine. 

He finished his hilarious tale by telling us all "It was a bit of fun." 

By which time I'd had enough. I put down my fork. I turned to face him and I all I said was "Yes, I do believe a lot of people thought apartheid was a bit of fun too."

Not my most biting rejoinder. But it was enough to have him telling us he agreed with the protestors cause - he just wanted to see the game. Which given the tales he'd just finished telling of bullying and violence was pretty clearly a lie. So a bully, a violent thug and a liar with no ability to reflect. Sounds a lot like a big, orange ex-president we waved tata to this week. 

And that's maybe the key thing I took out of this. This man was being a boor - he was dominating the conversation; agrandising himself and talking about some fairly distasteful things. But no one else challenged him. No one else said "Steady on there mate - we probably don't all share quite the same opinions here - how about a change of topic?". People with right wing, nasty views think its ok to spew those because no one tells them its not. 

It took Donald Trump inciting his supporters to storm the Capitol before the majority of the people around him finally said "Steady on there mate - this democratic facade is one we need to maintain and now you're threatening that you bozo...". 

If we don't challenge the bullies of the world - the little ones in our playgrounds and classrooms; the bigger ones in our workplaces; the ones at our dinnertables and social clubs - and the ones who hold positions of serious political power - then what we get is a world run on a micro and macro level by Trumps and worse.

The people who taught me that were exactly the people being disparaged at the dinner table the other night - the courageous women and men of organisations in Aotearoa like HART. The people in their homemade body armour and motorcycle helmets who went out weekend after weekend to face the batons of the Red Squad. The young Maori who led protest with defiant haka. The old activists from across the left who took their places on the picket lines. That's the side I was on then. That's the side I am on now. And ours is the side who, if good people don't falter and find the courage to speak truth to power, can win. 

A teacher replies to Scott Morrison

Let’s start with the facts.

Teaching is a job. Teachers receive both general and specialised training. They do what amounts to an apprenticeship. They are registered by a professional body. They go to work; they earn a salary.

In schools there are also Education Support staff – people whose jobs may be as varied as being school nurse or psychologist; a librarian; an office administrator or assistant or maybe the maintenance and odd jobs person. There are also cleaners, canteen staff, IT people and a whole range of other jobs – some casual, some part-time, some employed by the Department of Education and training; some employed directly by the school.

What they all have in common is that key word – job!

Working in a school is just that – work like anyone else has! It is not a religious vocation; it is not a special calling; its not something we do out of the goodness of our enormous hearts. We work in schools for the same reason everyone else goes to work – to pay the bills; keep our families fed and maybe have a bit left over to enjoy some leisure time.

Don’t get me wrong; as jobs go; its pretty satisfying – we’re not making commodities; we’re helping other people. And that’s nice. But don’t lose track of the key thing. School staff are just doing a job and they are doing it for the same reasons everyone else in society works.

Which is why PM Scott Morrison’s pleas to teachers to be heroes is so disgusting and so clearly about ideology. And why his failure to fall into line with much more sensible and rational State Premiers is creating confusion and anxiety at a time when we need calm.

As one colleague said. “I’m not a hero. I don’t want to be.”

School staff did not sign up to put their safety and the safety of their families on the line for the sake of a job. Frankly, no worker does.

Let’s then look at another fact. One the PM now acknowledges.

His latest statements make it clear that he’s had to recognise what school staff and our unions have been saying for a while – we want schools closed because we are concerned for OUR safety. Whether children can or can’t get the virus. Whether they do or don’t get sick (and die). Whether they can or can’t pass it on – is completely irrelevant. Schools are large workplaces – my school has nearly 200 adults onsite on any given day. And if we count the students who are 17 or 18 as being essentially adults, that figure rises to nearly 500. Whether the children are a danger to us and themselves is not the issue – it’s the other adults I am worried about!

Recognising this is exactly why the PM has had to produce his sick-making little video. He knows he can no longer ignore the danger that school staff are in if they return to the workplace – so instead he has to try and use the rhetoric of war; “doing your bit”, engaging with the brave ANZAC spirit.

It might be news to Scott Morrison (it certainly is to many first year Uni History students) but the ANZACs were slaughtered wholesale on the beaches of Gallipoli and in the end they lost. It was a stupid, reckless act by leaders who cared more about their reputations and the potential “glory” than about the lives of their troops. In fact perhaps a very apt metaphor for what the PM wants school staff to do.  

But there are some more facts that the PM seems to be continuing to ignore. The first is that children clearly can and do get the virus. Not a day goes by that we hear of another young person who has been infected – the latest a child of a Qantas flight attendant. In New Zealand one of the largest clusters is in a Secondary School – where the infection has spread among staff, students, their parents and their siblings. There are cases in child care centres. There are individuals and their families.

A March 22 article in The Lancet explains that about 5.6% of children who have the virus develop a serious case of the illness and about 0.6% develop complications and multi-organ failure. Fatalities are rare – but not unknown – one of the latest UK victims is only five years old. In teenagers fatality is more likely than for children under 10.

Scott Morrison keeps telling us he’s taking scientific and medical advice – perhaps his advisors haven’t read The Lancet (a prestigious, peer-reviewed medical journal). Because if they had, surely even those small numbers would be enough to say that the risk to the long term health and well-being of the nation’s children is just not worth whatever ideological point he wants to make by trying to force schools to fully re-open.

Some final facts that the PM either isn’t aware of or hasn’t got right.

If you listened to his begging video, you’d think that missing a bit of school was the single worst thing that could happen in a child’s life. As a teacher of over 25 years experience, let me assure you, its not!

We often agree to students going on extended family holidays; many students miss large sections of their schooling through illness – either mental or physical; many young people for periods of their life are school refusers or simply wag. For very few children does this do any long term harm. Teachers are educational experts – we have curriculum documents and years of collective experience which means we know what skills and knowledge children should have acquired at different points in their education. We are adept at filling the gaps when young people have missed out. That’s the job we get paid for.

In the middle of crisis and uncertainty what the nation’s children need are adults around them who love and support them. They need clarity and they need straight forward, direct messages. They need all the adults in their lives – school staff; parents; grandparents; and the powerful folk they see on the evening news – to all be on the same page and giving them the same clear message.

That message should be – staying home from school will protect you and it will protect the adults who care for you, at school and at home. Those adults are working their butts off to give you some structure and keep your education on track. It won’t always be easy; but don’t worry, the adults have your back and when this is over they will make sure you are ok.

If the PM really cared about young people and their education; instead of confusing the clear message that States like Victoria have delivered to staff, parents and children; instead of playing ideological games with people’s health and safety – he’d be letting school staff get on with the job that we’re paid to do; under conditions that allow us to do it safely and therefore keep doing it when this whole mess is over.

The dangers of the war metaphor in fighting the Covid Crisis

The metaphor of the invisible enemy; the Churchillian posing of leaders like Boris Johnson; Trump presenting himself as a war time President; and the new rhetoric about heroes have become part of the way many people speak about the Covid 19 crisis. But we have to stop. This is not a war; Covid 19 is not an enemy power. It’s a disease – a virus. It isn’t interested in building or destroying Empires. It makes no calculations about cost/gain ratios. It has no industrial-military complex to use. There is nothing rational; or planned or even irrational and unplanned about where it attacks, who it strikes down and who escapes. There can’t be – because its not even technically alive!

The war metaphor; on the surface; looks like it makes sense. Lots of people are being injured and lots of people are dying. There needs to be a massive mobilisation within our communities to fight back. Ordinary people are being asked to make enormous sacrifices – their freedoms; their livelihoods and in many cases their lives.

But there’s a terrible danger lurking in this apparently harmless metaphor. And its exactly those sacrifices that ordinary people are being asked to make which should alert us to it.

The working class have always paid the highest price for the ruling class’s wars. Its us who provide the frontline cannon fodder; us who provide the medical staff who patch up the wounded and carry away the dead; us who fill the factories turned over to wartime production; us who are thrown back onto the scrap heap when “normalcy” returns; and us who take the brunt of wartime rationing and shortages.

And so its also us who are asked to make the glorious sacrifices for our nations good. Us, who get to be un-named heroes for a few seconds. Us whose families get the letters edged in black and the posthumous medals for bravery – when we’d much prefer a real living loved one to a dead hero.

This has come home to me recently in trying to argue for what seems to me to be a very basic demand – schools should close and stay closed. If there’s a need to run a skeleton staff for the most vulnerable and the children of emergency workers – then there has to be through-going provision of cleaning; PPE and a salary loading to recognise that these people are going well beyond the requirements of their job.

I have sat in amazement as the barrage of emails came in. People telling me that it’s our job, why should we get paid more? People telling me that PPE should be saved for the healthcare heroes. People implying I might be somewhat selfish in not wanting to “do my bit” – presumably for the “war effort”.

Let’s look at these ideas closer. Let’s start with the basic call for PPE. Right across the globe right now essential workers – and that now means the folk who work the checkout at the supermarket; the people who drive the trams, buses and trains; the rubbish collectors; the pharmacists and their assistants and retail staff; as well as health care workers right in the thick of it – have been demanding better protection for themselves. And well they should – they’ve been catching the disease in alarming numbers and dying in alarming numbers too. Amazon workers have struck; Coles workers have threatened to walk off and in multiple places around the globe those health care heroes have walked off the job too – because without proper PPE, they can’t save anyone’s life – not even their own.

For teachers (and childcare workers and anyone else who is trying to keep some semblance of normalcy for the nation’s children) to ask for appropriate PPE is not selfish; its not taking it away from anyone else who needs it – it’s a basic demand to keep people – those children included – safe. But the war time rhetoric means that rather than people being able to acknowledge that a public service can’t take place unless it can take place safely – they are lining up to make the ultimate sacrifice!

The same goes for demanding proper pay. I’ve been told that at a time when lots of people are suffering job losses and pay cuts – that its terribly selfish to want extra pay. But what this fails to recognise is that those of us who now find ourselves essential are also often some of the most poorly paid. That’s certainly true for all the supermarket workers; but its also true in education and in healthcare. Child care workers are at the bottom of education pay ladder – and yet suddenly their services become vital to the running of society. It’s only if you buy into the “war-footing” rhetoric that you’d be able to argue that they should not be being properly recompensed for the huge risk they are placing themselves and their families in.

As for “doing my bit”. That’s probably the argument that makes me the angriest – and the one that the war metaphor is most responsible for. I wouldn’t enlist to fight and die in an imperialist war; and I won’t be signing up to die for a crisis caused by the capitalist classes failure to take WHO advice seriously. Add to that its failure to maintain a health system that could cope with such a crisis. Its failure to have a proper stock of PPE. Its failure to fund research sufficiently. Its failure to house the population safely. Its failure to prevent violence against women and children in their homes and in society. The list goes on. The working class didn’t cause this crisis. And damned if we’re going to pay for it.

The thing the do-gooders and those with a matyr complex miss – is that its workers demanding safe and properly paid working conditions who are actually the ones really “doing their bit”. By demanding proper hand sanitiser, gloves and masks – workers in food distribution are protecting all of us from virus transmission. By demanding that schools and child care centres close; we’re actually doing our bit to protect not just ourselves and our families, but our students and their families too. By demanding proper pay and loadings where we’re doing extra; we’re protecting the future of our jobs and our economy and in fact taking the steps which will build a better world out of the chaos this virus has created.

A final word on the concept of the hero. I am in awe of the men and women working in hospitals and other healthcare roles right now. And I think that words like brave absolutely apply to them. But those workers themselves have been very clear. They are afraid. They are anxious. They are exhausted. When we start to use the war rhetoric of heroes – we miss the humanity and we allow ourselves to justify their sacrifice as glorious and necessary. What health care workers need isn’t praise, applause or empty phrases of thanks – they need massive funding; the urgent manufacture of PPE, ventilators and other medical equipment; they need extra staff so they can have shifts that don’t exhaust them; they need new hospitals built immediately; they need free, safe accommodation if they want to isolate from their families. These real, practical needs are the ones that are covered up by the glorious sacrifice rhetoric that comes with the war metaphor.

In Homer’s epic, The Odyssey, Odysseus travels to the underworld and there meets the shade of the great hero Achilles. Achilles had a choice – a long, happy but inglorious life or a brief shining moment of glory and an early death. He chose the latter. But asked by Odysseus whether he made the right choice he replies, chillingly – that he’d rather be the slave of the poorest man on earth than be a king in Hades.

No one really wants to be a hero – they want to do their job and go home safe and well to their families. Let’s leave behind the empty rhetoric about invisible enemies and war-time resilience. Let’s build a better world out of the chaos that that the ruling class have lead us into – rather than being taken in by their empty weasel words.

System Bolaget

As some of you will already know from the title - I am in Sweden. For those of you thinking my typos have just got a little out of control - the System Bolaget are the state run liquor stores in Sweden. Yes, that's right folks, the Swedish state firmly controls the distribution of hard liquor. You cannot buy booze to take away from anywhere else. And they close early on a Saturday afternoon. In fact there are few things more frightening than the across town dash to the nearest System Bolaget - not quite sure if you'll make it. Last time I made such a dash I ended up in a line with other desperate, middle class people who could see the time ticking and weren't sure we were going to even get into the shop on time.
Once in, there's more desperation. The nicer, central city shops don't look that different to a bottle store anywhere else on the planet - except there's no advertising. Just informative signs telling you "red wine", "white wine"...And there's lots of people with big shopping baskets knowing this is the last chance before Monday morning to stock up.
The sight of other reasonably well-dressed middle aged people trying to estimate whether they need one, two or five bottles of red to get through the rest of the weekend is a little ... sobering.
And that's the nice, modern stores. In the outer suburbs you will still be confronted with locked cabinets displaying the goods and the need to front up to the counter to ask the sales assistant to go into the back room for you. Brown paper bags and shameful look as you leave are optional.
Of course you can still stock up on alcoholic beverages at your local supermarket - so long as they are under 3.5% . But the principle remains. The state controls anything stronger and you don't get to buy it after 3pm Saturday.
What's it all about you ask?
Revenue is certainly part of the answer. But I think the bigger answer is ideological. Swedish Social Democracy made peace with the ruling class. It even let the King stay on - he's allowed to chair a committee or two and have some palaces. Part of the price of that peace is massive social control and subtle "policing". And the key way this is done is through the friendly face of paternalism. System Bolaget are just one of the more obvious forms of paternalism. The "Nordic model" for sex work is another.
Having to go to a special shop to buy the hard stuff (in my case two half bottles of French wine) is more than just a charming piece of Swedish oddness -in fact it's not charming at all. There's something deeply creepy about that level of state interference in your life.

What's there to see in Novosibirsk

In Listvyanka a French man told me there was nothing to see in Novosibirsk. He was wrong!

The capital of Siberia is built on the Ob river. It really only began when in 1895 when the trans Siberian railway made it that far. Before then there had been a way station on the trans Siberian track. And before that, much like the rest of Siberia it was taiga, tundra and a lot of mosquitoes. 

The city only got it's present name in the 1950s, but it had been built to be grand. The opera house is the biggest in Russia...a massive concrete dome which dominates the central square. The Lenin statue is huge -a fabulous piece of socialist (not quite) realist sculpture. 

In Siberia no one seems to have noticed that the Soviet era is over.

And nowhere is this more evident than the Museum of the CCCP. My host had recommended this museum as "hands on" and the only thing the eccentric curator could say in English was "you can touch everything". And I did!

Each room has a theme...a child's schoolroom...with books, toys, posters. The office of an important official, with road maps, copies of the complete works of Lenin, a living room - with packaging, household goods, a covetable teaset. 

Propaganda posters and busts of Lenin as far as the eye can see. And a few pictures of Uncle Joe (Stalin that is) as well. 

It was a little overwhelming. I squealed when I found the front page of Pravda announcing perestroika. All this history and politics, alive and real and tangible.

Tangible because it is the artefacts of people's lived experience. Magazines, albums of popular music, fashionable clothes, children's books, curling irons, kitchen equipment, stereos, video games. The things of everyday life. 

To say I would travel to the middle of Siberia again just to revisit this museum is not an overstatement. I could have spent all day looking through the albums, reading children's exercise books, poring over knitting patterns. And next time, with more Russian, I will. 

The French man then was wrong. There are hundreds of things to see in Novosibirsk...and many of them are to be found in a little museum, run by two very eccentric men in a side street off Lenin square. 

Trains through Siberia.

Siberia is big. This should be obvious. But the body and the mind don't really understand how big until they travel through it. Slowly.
I have been using my nerdy train handbook and the nerdy calculation table for working out just how slowly. And for the last five hours we haven't gone much over 60km. I could drive to Novosibirsk faster. Except I probably couldn't because Russian driving is special and particular.
The aim appears to be to wait till one can't see if there is on-coming traffic, especially if this also happens to be a blind corner or the brow of a hill or both. Then one speeds up till the front of the van is virtually on the bumper of the car being passed. Next, a deft manoeuvre out into what is hopefully open road and a roar of speed. The most exciting part is not re-entering the correct lane until the last possible moment. One must achieve re-entry at the point where a fiery death is almost inevitable in a head-on with a truck.
Now I don't mind living a little dangerously, but I will leave the driving to the experts.
Trains, albeit slow ones, it is.
Siberia is tundra and taiga. Wide open spaces then birch forest so tight it's like the trees are hugging - a monumental group hug for hundreds of square kilometres.
And it is unbelievably lovely. As the sun sinks, long shadows stretch out between the birch, hills roll gently away, the long summer grass sways and the endless sky blushes slightly.
But there's an awful lot of it.
Siberia has long been where Russia has sent it's exiles or where they have sent themselves. It's a land for people who don't want to be disturbed or who are too disturbing to have near.
Little villages fringe the railway line...wooden houses that don't look like they have changed much in the last century : each with a garden overflowing now it's summer with vegetables and flowers.
Russians appear to love flowers. There is a flower shop in almost every apartment complex I have passed. Given in parts of Siberia the ground doesn't unfreeze till July and is frozen again by November, I guess I can see why a bit of bright life might feel a necessity.
The sky is clear over Siberia tonight. There's a sliver of a moon and the only other light is the occasional headlight from a long distance truck on the Irkutsk to Moscow highway. I don't think I mind too much that we are rolling along at 50 km.

Olkhon Islabd

It's a little hard to maintain my signature cynicism somewhere as genuinely lovely as Olkhon Island. But I will try.
Getting here is interesting. My driver, Sergey, who I think used to be a paratrooper, quickly steered his large van off the road and onto what appeared to be a track. Of course I use the word road very loosely. A cleared stretch of bumpy dirt comes closer.
It soon became obvious why Sergey had made this initially troubling decision. The nasty little animal track was smoother than the made road.
We bumped along it for sometime with Sergey making disapproving noises at other drivers and driving at a speed that seemed a touch reckless. But between moments of horror and stretches of discomfort, we would top a rise and below us would spread a vista of water, rocks, forest - the wild beauty of the island. Sergey would take his hands off the wheel, and gesture expansively. I would agree that it was marvellous, hoping quick affirmation would return his hands firmly to the wheel and the tyres to connection with the track.
But once here all discomfort is quickly forgotten. There are long Sandy beaches, fringed with pine forest and with water which varies from intense sapphire blue to sparkling jewel green. There are little rocky bays, soaring cliffs, the gentle sound of waves. And a whole lot of Shamanism.
Think poles tied with coloured ribbons, trees with coloured ribbons, rocks with coloured ribbons. Today I even saw a young man in the regalia, including bells sewn to everything. The effect ruined only slightly by his baseball cap and selfie taking.
Beaches here come with portable Banya - the Russian sauna. Stand around long enough and you will get to witness that great Russian tradition...overweight, middle aged women in bikinis running from banya to the freezing water of the lake and back. This edifying sight did not encourage me to try either activity or buy a bikini.
Standing above the action is a charming cafe, wherein I purchased a delicious pot of sea blackthorn tea. Sea blackthorn is a tiny yellow fruit, a hip I think, from a fairly rare plant. It has a sour, citrus flavour. It's fabulous. What I didn't know was that it is also a fiendishly powerful diuretic.
Sometime around the time I was wading in the ankle achingly cold water of the lake, it occurred to me that I needed to answer nature's call. But there is no shelter, no convenient bush, not even a largish rock. Just sand, space and a lot of sunburnt Russians. Really, bright red, painfully skin cancer causing sunburn. But that's another story.
I make it about half way back to my guesthouse and then I realise, it's just not going to work. I give in. I stand on a bare hillside, looking at one of the most spectacular views I have seen recently, and just let nature take her course.
A little piece of a hillside in one of Shamanism's most sacred places will now forever have a little of my genetic material.