Measuring success is easy, especially if we apply contemporary values

Success in Shepparton can be measured easily, certainly if we apply contemporary values.

In fact success anywhere is easily gauged if we apply assessments that have catapulted humanity to the point were it stands astride the world.

Yes, busyness driven by the exploitation, sometimes knowingly and others not so, of human nature has given us so many wonderful things, but left us teetering on the edge of the abyss.

There is another way.

Idleness appears integral to who and what we are and yet any suggestion that it be enthusiastically embraced brings scorn, derision and laughter as we are so conditioned why a life of work, accumulation, ambition and pleasure arising from what is considered success that we are unable, it seems, to contemplate anything different.

However, writing in “Idleness; a philosophical essay” Brian O’Connor said: “A more stable and less ambitious socioeconomic system could possible save us from some of the more familiar perils of modern life”.

Already, before writing another word, I can hear the chorus of complaints from those addicted to a life of busyness, who see success only in achievement and living a life diametrically opposed to idleness.

Much of what we enjoy today, they would argue, only exists because of efforts of those who were engaged, busy and constantly pushing to improve things, make them better and wherever and whenever possible allowing people to live an easier and trouble free life. 

And, of course, there is lots of sense in what they say, but, as most know, a trouble free life is a mirage.

Many conflate idleness with pleasure, but they are in fact different and as O’Connor says pleasure is eventually expended, it cannot form the basis of any long-term way of life, whereas idleness allied with virtue has a certain endurance.

Busyness became embedded in our lives after the neoliberal seed planted in the first half of last century and  then flowered in latter decades when those playing the long game manufactured a few crises to suggest that what existed was failing and the philosophies that drove, among other things the monetisation of everything and privatisation of the publicly owned infrastructure, was the only way.

The resultant busyness produced many things, among them an inequality of a like the world has never seen before as it can be shown that just a few more than 60 individuals control more wealth than 3.5 billion people.

Interestingly, inequality carries its own seeds of destruction.

Although that inequality could bring social or revolutionary changes another even more destructive process, which has arisen from this obsession with wealth, control and power, is afoot - it’s the disruption of our climate system bringing changes to our weather of a type never before experienced.

Where does idleness fit in with this? 

Well, it seems that virtuous idleness allows time for reflection and strips us of our energy-rich behaviours that are pushing our world closer to circumstances about which we know little. 

And so what does that mean for Shepparton? For a start we should embrace idleness, step back from the previous PM’s mantra of jobs and growth, consume less, detach ourselves from our energy-rich lives and encourage our city council to follow the lead of their Melbourne counterparts, the City of Darebin, which has formally adopted a climate emergency strategy.

Freedom is a fickle thing, but the UBI can help us experience emancipation

Freedom is a fickle thing, little understood by most and seldom experienced by many.

Imagined freedom for some is just that for the for the daily vicissitudes of the economy limit their behaviour and so remove the spontaneity that is fundamental to emancipation.

And that sociological control, the removal of our human spontaneity, is the unspoken goal of the power regimes in society whose control rests with people not understanding or experiencing real economic freedom.

We are all working for “the man” and history has shown, repeatedly,  that “the man” doesn’t like spontaneity or genuine freedom among the people and so will crush it whenever and wherever it appears.

And so the freedom we imagine and pine for in not being economically obliged to dance everyday to the fiscal tune of an inherently flawed systems; systems that favour just a few and disenfranchise the rest, can be found through a Universal Basic Income (UBI).

Australia is rich beyond imagination, although political rhetoric tells us otherwise and despite the political carping, we are ideally placed to simply give people money and so that is where the UBI comes in.

Annie Lowry describes UBI in her 2018 book “Give People Money: The simple idea to solve inequality and revolutionise our lives” saying, “Every working-age adult citizen would receive the same basic income payment every week. A smaller basic income, known simply as Child Benefit, will be paid for each child. Pensioners will receive a higher basic income, known as the Basic Pension.”

The idea of a UBI has floated in and out of political discussion from as far back as the 16th Century (of course it wasn’t then called the UBI) but has not found favour, however, times are different now.

Although not the most important issue, but seemingly the most prominent, we are headed for technological unemployment and under what exists people without work will be forced to rely on the government for an income.

According to economists at Oxford University about half of American jobs, including millions of white-collar ones, are susceptible to imminent elimination due to technological advances and history illustrates that Australians, and by implication those of us in the Goulburn Valley, are usually on a similar trajectory.

A legion of arguments can be amassed supporting a UBI and any counter-argument can be easily dismantled if people willingly, honestly and ethically allow facts to influence their thinking.

The UBI is about equality, sharing and decency and it is soaked in practicality and Robert Jameson writing in 

“The Case for a Basic Income”, said: “These cost savings would arise from the fact that basic income is an incredibly simple system to administrate, yet would be able to replace a huge swathe of complicated benefit systems currently in operation - and free us all from paying for the huge administration costs that go with them.”

Further, he wrote: “There would no longer be any need for sickness benefits paid to people who are unable to work. There would be no need for tax credits or 'universal credit' or income support. Incapacity benefit, carers' allowances, some (but not all) disability benefits, maternity allowances, child benefit, council tax benefit - no longer needed!”

Where does the money come from is the most common question, and that of course is not unreasonable.

The arithmetic for bureaucratic savings is obvious, but somewhat harder to detail are savings arriving from the broad betterment of people that arises from the lifting of the oppressive need “to keep a roof over our heads” and the willingness and ability of people to take risks (start a business) when their economic survival is underwritten.

Experience from around the world, especially in poor and developing countries, illustrates that to directly give people cash is clearly best as it is nearly always used to improve a person’s life, despite the odd miscreant who wastes the payment.

And as with the present drought there would no need for public aid for farmers, as we would have already “have their back”.

Taxation favours the few and so would need to be restructured to ensure all were treated equally.

 Interestingly, the UBI is not about tinkering around at the edges, rather a dramatic, game-changing simplification that offers, as Robert Jameson says, the real prospect of a genuine revolution in simplification, in efficiency and in the reduction of costly bureaucracy.

A short local and personal story - the little girl from my street, now no longer little as she has three children, one in his twenties, and is being treated for breast cancer.

She has to travel to Bendigo each morning for treatment after which, for economic reasons, she has to rush back to work in the afternoons. A UBI would avoid that crushing necessity in what is a truly difficult time. 

A UBI would allow her to escape that practicality and then, as an added bonus, allow for personal, intellectual and emotional freedom.

We lose our grip of stupendous wealth and private interests snap it up

Sadly, we let the stupendous wealth from Australia’s mining boom slip through our fingers only to see it be snapped up by private interests.

The benefits of that boom should have been dispersed throughout society, including the Goulburn Valley, but no evidence of the boom is to be found here for we mistakenly believed the free marketeers and the idea of “trickle-down economics”.

"Work is the refuge of people who have
nothing better to do" - Oscar Wilde.

Profits from that boom left just a handful of people astonishingly rich and the rest of us wide-eyed and wondering what happened.

The promises were hollow, misleading and little more than lies. Trickle down became trickle up, or flood up.

However, we stand on the cusp of another boom, one that can bring massive benefits to all, but already the corporations are gathering, eyeing off the profits and strategising what they can do to ensure they will benefit most and wider society, that’s you and me, will continue to foot the bill.

Profit from this boom, some of which is happening here in the Goulburn Valley, will be, if we allow it, privatised and the costs socialised.

The arrival of renewable energy presents a wonderful opportunity - it’s new, it’s different and being here at the beginning we have the chance, and the responsibility to ensure the industry is structured in a way that it is effectively publicly owned and so benefits all, rather than a handful that circumstance has favoured. 

Altruism, not profit should drive the process.

Our present energy industry morphed from a publicly owned and operated operation to a private, profit-driven process in which the customers, the users were the losers. 

Writing in his new book, “The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future”, Andrew Yang said: “We have a 1960s-era government that has few solutions to the problems of 2018”, suggesting our government operates in a parallel universe.

True, Yang is writing about America, but much of what is happening in the U.S. is reflected in the ideologies of many influential people in Australia.

Australia is fantastically rich and convinced by a few rather tired rhetorical flourishes about safety and security we willingly hand over billions of dollars for military hardware and yet the idea of real and tangible personal security and safety that could be answered by a universal basic income (UBI) is declared beyond our financial capacity and so impractical.

It is neither, rather the UBI is totally doable and like the urgency needed in response to climate change, all it needs is the will and adherence to the idea that people are vastly more important than profit combined with the understanding that the accumulation of profit in private coffers adds nothing to broader wellbeing of the populace.

The renewable energy boom is a partial answer to the climate change dilemma and is also an integral tool in achieving a universal basic income. Now we just need the will.

In all this it is worth considering Oscar Wilde’s observation: “Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.” Unfortunately, that may describe the vast majority of us”.

GV Health warrants our celebratory recognition

Institutions are greater, or lesser than the sum of their parts.

Evidence of that abounds and that can be found in the positive sense at Shepparton’s GV Health.

Works worth nearly $170 million to improve
Shepparton's Goulburn Valley Health has already started.

An institution is nought more than a collection of buildings and whatever appliances or fittings it’s particular pursuit demands, but it’s the people who populate the institution, those who work there, who make it either “greater” or “lesser”.

A recent visit to GV Health for a day procedure gave me ample time, and certainly, a practical opportunity, to make a judgment - it was friendly, professional and efficient, putting the sword to any belief that public patients are afforded a lesser quality of care than privately insured counterparts.

Of course, emerging from the experience with a good report immediately enhances such life events, but had the outcome been somewhat different, it would have been worse than mischievous not to acknowledge the kindness and friendliness of all.

The Shepparton hospital is most certainly a complex collection of parts and work has already started on a $169 million refresh of the institution that will make it even more labyrinth-like but at the same time a more efficient workplace.

Health care and its associated social assistance is Shepparton’s largest employer and with the broad smiles of helpful and conscientious people being the practical recognition of the broader management at GV Health, we should celebrate our hospital.

The idea of public health, as we see it at GV Health, is as it should be with each of us willingly opening our wallets to ensure health care is there for all our fellows, and ourselves, at minimal or no cost making the private health insurance industry both irrelevant and unnecessary.

However, what we have in Shepparton, as is the case throughout Australia, is entangled in perverse machinations that have evolved over decades as the tentacles of the market economy have been allowed, almost welcomed, into the cash-rich veins of the health industry.

First, it should not be considered an “industry”, rather it should be a service; a service whose aim is simply that of making those who use it, well again and not making those who work within it, rich.

Last week’s “Four Corners” program on ABC TV explored the problems of our burgeoning health industry and expeditiously avoided the ideological debate about private versus public, but was able to point toward many private health patients who had been exploited with costs far exceeding what was expected.

Australia’s public health service is among the best and to keep it there and improve it even more, it seems that upon being elected to any State or Federal parliamentary position, he or she who is elected should be required to immediately forgo whatever private health insurance they might have and so be forced to experience first hand the public health service they are responsible for.

Considering life, it is mostly only personal experience that enables you to make any sort of worthwhile or useful judgement about the services upon which we depend. 

Personal obsessions seem reasonable and not unexpected

Accusations of personal obsessional behaviour seem reasonable and not unexpected.

Family and friends, well, some friends at least, are wary of crossing certain boundaries, of opening the door, setting free those mania’s, unleashing those obsessions, igniting the fire.

And after three days at the annual National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF) and having just finished reading “The Violence of Climate Change: Lessons of Resistance from Nonviolent Activists” the fire is ablaze and even more intense.

The news, in a general sense is not good with humanity walking blindly into a calamity about which it seems broadly unaware and while those challenges were spelt out at the NCCARF event, many speakers, including one from the Shepparton-based Goulburn Broken Greenhouse Alliance (GBGHA), told of innovative efforts and positive responses from all parts of Australia.

Yes, the news for many was disempowering, but equally others found discussions, often simply through chance encounters with other attendees, inspiring and within that sufficiently encouraging to press on with climate change responses in their towns or districts.

NCCARF director Professor Jean Palutikof, from Griffith University on the Gold Coast, closed the conference saying that just a few weeks before the event she had felt quite depressed about the level of climate change adaption in Australia,  but having seen and heard most of what the disparate group of presenters had to say, and what they had achieved in their respective communities, she felt refreshed and uplifted.

Tatura’s Marisa O’Halloran, one of the speakers, told of innovative work by the greenhouse alliance, fulfilling in many ways what author Kevin J. O’brien had written about in “The Violence of Climate Change”.

O’Brien wrote: “Responses to climate change should be courageous, because it is tempting to be overwhelmed and paralyzed by fear in the face of a problem so large and so complicated. Responses to climate change should be structural, because destructive institutions and systems have developed and solidified over time. Finally, responses to climate change should be creative, because the adaptive complexity of this violence exceeds conventional wisdom.”

Everything Marisa, and others discussed epitomised the responses O’Brien argued were necessary, critical, and courageous.

O’Brien argued that every person of privilege (that’s us) should learn about the effects of climate change on our own neighbourhoods and with that in mind, questions have been put to a few locals, with the answers ranging across the spectrum of doubt, uncertainty, unanswerable questions and, beyond that, simply not knowing what to do.

A Dookie fellow is finding measurable climatic differences to his farming; a Mooroopna friend is noticing hitherto unseen downpours in unlikely places and bushfires in equally strange areas.

  

Climate change cannot be stopped, mitigation is still important, but mostly we should focus on adapting to a future in which thriving as it was understood in the mid to latter decades of the 20th is no longer possible. 

Obsession has produced an inequitable and out of control economy; obsession has unleashed the fetish of consumerism; obsession has taken us down the dark path of energy-rich lifestyles; and, if we are to turn this ship around to take us to a way of life that is caring, friendly, sustainable and free of the present prevailing violence, we need to embrace hitherto unseen obsession.

Fidelity to values, ideals, beliefs, passions critical for wellbeing

Fidelity to your values, ideals, beliefs and passions is critical for wellbeing.

Sadly, I have been somewhat unfaithful to mine of late and that lack of loyalty is annoying, personally  hurtful, and it brings on an intellectual dissonance.

Yes, we owe to ourselves, family, friends and others, to be, and say, what we believe in.

Reflecting on my life, it was at its richest when surrounded by a warm sense of community, when it felt as if we were all in this together, when the aim was understood, when altruism prevailed and we were remote from the root values of the market-driven world.

However, seduced by the baubles and trinkets of the consumerist world, I forgot for some time the naturally attractive lessons found in the early 70’s book “Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered” by E. F. Schumacher.

Primed by Schumacher and his ilk, I fell into learning about climate change more than a decade ago and it was reaffirmed, after listening to and reading many books by the world’s sharpest thinkers, that small really is beautiful and, unless something hitherto unknown happens within a year or two, then a “small” and restrained way of living is that is open to us.

So let’s talk briefly about values, ideals, beliefs and passions, well, mine at least.

Our addiction to 20th Century development ideals, along with our dependence on what is a broken economic system that favours a few and disenfranchises most, while tearing at Earth’s essence leaves me intellectually struggling to understand why we can’t see the senselessness of our behaviour.

We have known, unequivocally, for nearly four decades that using fossil fuels as an energy source was wrong and yet even today, those able to make the necessary changes to renewable energy still procrastinate, equivocate and lack the requisite courage to kick open the door to give humanity just the slightest chance of finding its way out of this mess.

Plans to build a new Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) costing nearly $40 million are controversial, but it seems mostly about the cost and not with regard its environmentally offensive nature. 

Rather than an entirely new building, the City of Greater Shepparton should have turned to existing futuristic-like communications technology to allow the placement of administrative staff at existing buildings throughout the city, freeing up most of its headquarters building in Welsford St, Eastbank, for use as the new SAM.

Our legal processes are similar and so rather than forcing everyone to travel into Shepparton to see and feel the law at work, we should be taking the law to the people, that is we should have a virtual courthouse in every village throughout the district.

The energy we presently rely on for transport will become prohibitively expensive, and beyond that significantly disrupts Earth’s climate systems, human movement will revert to what it once was and local communities will be forced to become more self-sufficient.

Recently it fell to me to defend the idea of a super secondary school for Shepparton and although the consolidation of educational resources has clear benefits, it is an idea that offends beliefs that small is beautiful, a concept that we are going to have get much closer to and better understand as a disrupted climate system forces us to all live in a more localised way.

The new SAM at Shepparton's Victoria Park Lake.

Privately owned vehicles for personal transport, cars electric or otherwise, are problematic, as is air transport; profit at the expense of another’s wellbeing falls into the same purview; privatisation is about private gain at public expense; our taxation system is fundamentally unfair favouring the few and heaping the heaviest costs upon those least able to afford it and unable to pay for legal and financial advice to avoid their moral responsibility of paying tax; our electoral system is flawed favouring a homogenised class of people in our so-called classless society - sortition (choosing names out of hat) will resolve that; yes, work is important, but not so that we have little time for anything else meaning we need to accept artificial intelligence freeing us and enabling us the time to fulfil the promise that flickered during the Renaissance, that is the embrace the arts, literature, science and learning.

We are too rich and wealth equates with an energy use and a lifestyle beyond the Earth’s resources.

Climate change, that is human-induced changes to Earth’s climate system, makes all other concerns redundant and a certain personal calmness, and wellbeing comes from learning about what is happening and why, and then being a part of a positive response.

Tolerance is another of life's double edged swords

Tolerance is another of life’s double edged swords.

Swing the sword one way and life is enhanced, reverse it and swing again and all that is good about life is sliced and untethered.

The good sense applied here by
Joëlle Gergis contrasts with the
nonsense talked by two radio DJs.

A simple example of tolerance could be seen at Shepparton’s Victoria Park Lake.

An expanse of water in the city’s heart was irresistible to power boat owners whom, along with their skiers,  pretty much claimed the lake for some years as their own, and although many grumbled about a minority having almost exclusive use, they tolerated their behaviour.

That all changed a few years ago when the Millennial Drought brought with it distinct difficulties for the lake and in about 2009 significant works changed it to what we see today — a friendly expanse of water, suitable for a variety of passive pastimes with the lake now an integral part of the environment in which it sits.

That change has a different intent, is welcomed by many, maybe most, but still it demands a degree of tolerance from a few, mainly those who continue to champion the idea of power boats on the lake.

Another change to the lake and its environs is coming, well the prepartory works have already started, for the building a new Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) on the banks of the lake — a service station that epitomises the questionable fossil fuel industry is being removed and replaced by symbol of a changing culture in the city.

The new gallery is not welcomed by all and so now the tolerance boot is on the other foot; first is was those alarmed by the offence of power boats who were forced to acquiesce and now the quiet and often intangible beauty of art, along with the equally subtle beauty of the environment has a grasp on the city’s imagination.

For the past couple of centuries industrialisation and its sibling, consumerism, has transformed life on earth, frequently for the better, but often it’s quite the reverse. Some have championed what has been happening, others, rather, have simply tolerated it.

The idea of tolerance has been simmering for some time and as history illustrates it has been the root cause of endless societal disruption bringing endless difficulties and with the latest example being the military intervention in Syria, an action some applaud, some decry and most simply tolerate.

Joëlle Gergis (centre) at the launch of 'Sunburnt
 Coutry"with Professor David Karoly (he mentored
 Joëlle and lanched the book) with the Executive
 Publisher at MUP,  Sally Heath (far left) and the
 Dean of Science at University of Melbourne,
Professor Karen Day.

Recently, sitting in a coffee shop waiting for the late train back to Seymour after hearing Dr Joëlle Gergis (she’ll be in Shepparton in November) talk about her new book “Sunburnt Country: The history and future of climate change in Australia” in which the climate scientist uses plain language to explain the reality of climate change.

My coffee was accompanied by two fellows chatting on the radio about the delusions of those endorsing climate change science and talked with a confidence that camouflaged their deficit of knowledge and understanding of something quite unlike that ever seen before and which threatens the safety and stability of civilisation.

There was nothing I could do except tolerate the nonsense on the radio and tolerate it I did, but in doing that remembered the Edmund Burke quote: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.

So, is to tolerate something doing nothing? Well, yes it is, but in some instances it is essential except in those moments when people pollute our environment and risk life as we know it.

Shepparton people know or care little about sea level rise

Shepparton people mostly know or care little about sea level rise.

Why? Well, it is geographically irrelevant as it has none, or almost no effect on the daily lives of people in the Goulburn Valley.

Most see it as situationally unimportant as the nearest ocean is about 200 km away and on the other side the Great Dividing Range, and as Shepparton is about 115 metres above sea level concerns about rising seas simply don’t compute.

And of course that is correct and so the ocean shoreline is something mostly preserved in the minds of Sheppartonians for holidays; sea level rise is most certainly not front of mind.

However, the behaviour of the world’s oceans is, interestingly, something we should be acutely curious about as our behaviour here, as remote as we might be from the world’s oceans, impacts, in turn on their behaviour, or more correctly the world’s ice sheets that hold sufficient fresh water to raise the levels of our oceans by more than 60 metres.

Many argue such massive melts and sea level rise are unlikely this century and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has suggested only about a metre by 2100, but scientist Jason Box who is studying ice melt in Greenland believes we will see two metres by the end of the century.

And again, that is irrelevant to most in the Goulburn Valley as two metres is wholly inconsequential to people here, or is it?

Well, yes, it is a concern, or should be. 

We can be distracted by many things when the discussion turns to sea level rise, but in essence it is connected directly to human behaviour; our behaviour right here in Shepparton and whether or not we remain locked into our energy-rich ways or do we argue for, and support structural changes  to our community, including such things as the embrace of renewable energy and a total rethink of how we move about the city, and so what our city looks like and how its infrastructure works.

Shepparton is strangely contradictory for it is in one sense modern and sophisticated and in another locked into values, ideals and habits of the mid-20th Century and it is our adherence to the latter that manifests itself as sea level rise.

Writing recently in The Guardian, Jeff Sparrow discussed the wonder of technology, something from which Shepparton his richly benefitted, and quoted author Elizabeth Kolbert, who said: “It may seem impossible to imagine, that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we’re now in the process of doing.”

That observation, Sparrow wrote, was made 13 years ago and the warnings from scientists, he added, have grown both more specific and desperate – and yet the march to destruction has only redoubled its pace. 

Hard to grasp, hard to get you head around? Of course it is, but understand it we must and to better do that, read Jeff Goodell’s book, “The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World.”

Sitting through an exhausting council meeting

Sitting through a recent meeting of the City of Greater Shepparton council without saying a word was exhausting.

Remaining mute as your heart breaks and you weep (metaphorically) is tough, damn tough when everything you know, have heard about from the world’s sharpest thinkers, and what you have read from philosophers, scientists and their ilk, some dead, but most still living, is not even considered when decisions are made about our city’s future.

The responsible men (and women) of our city may have worldviews and opinions about many things, but those thoughts and ideas are constrained by values, cultural and otherwise, that have solidified in modernity; the last two centuries or so when progressive thinking was about making things bigger and smaller, stronger (not necessarily longer laster), faster, slicker, and grounded in the belief that growth is the epitome of good.

However, the growth equation has always been fundamentally flawed - endless growth in a finite world is not only impossible but to pursue it with the enthusiasm that surreptitiously drives our council’s decisions flirts with irresponsibility.

There comes a time, and it is now, when someone, somewhere with influence must declare that the progress as it is commonly understood today is not what we want rather, we should be turning our attention, and our naturally innovative ways to creating and building a Greater Shepparton able to survive and thrive in a century  quite unlike anything experienced.

Many good things are happening in Shepparton, and have council’s imprimatur, such as solar farms and pressure on our State Government to improve our rail infrastructure, but all things, including our wonderful new Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) are coloured by the intent that they will add to the city’s growth.

To be fair, many see the new SAM as something that will elevate the city’s cultural climate, but frequently its supporters are forced, sadly, to justify its nearly $40 million cost as major plank in Shepparton’s financial future.

It’s equally sad, and disappointing when most everything that happens here, and everywhere else for that matter, has its success measured in fiscal terms (growth), when the truly important gauge of something’s value is less tangible, emanating from the heart; the elusive success that is about human happiness.

Most equate happiness with financial growth and the modern understanding of success, but repeated international studies have shown that happiness plateaus at quite a low-level of income, particularly once the basics of life are covered.

The City of Greater Shepparton's proposed new
 art gallery (SAM) at Victoria Park Lake.

Shepparton’s proposed ring-road was on the agenda at the recent meeting (many in the public gallery, armed with signs, came to hear that debate) and although controversial for some, fearing it will injury the amenity  of their homes near the suggested route, it is something we need to avoid, completely.

A ring-road is an integral part of the fossil-fuelled agenda and rather than entrenching it, even more, we need to be imagining ways in which we can create a community, a society, a way of life that further distances us from something that is taking us even closer to the abyss.

Industrial civilization, one that wants growth, profit and “more” is the antithesis of what we need and sitting silenced through a council meeting would be much more relaxing if discussions were free of the rigidity imposed by the status quo.