One of my greatest questions of late, to myself so I don’t bore others to death, has been what is the fascination with higher education?  I went to Year 12 at school, because I felt at the time that I wanted to go to University or join the Air Force as a Navigator.  For both of these I needed specific grades in specific subjects, so I took those subjects.  But towards the end of Year 11 I was completely over the whole studying bit.  I enjoyed Geography due to a great teacher.  I was cruising in Maths since I had dropped a level.  I was bored out of my mind by Chemistry as the poor bastard teaching us knew sod all about it – he was a Biology specialist.  Physics was totally meh and the less said about General Studies and English the better.  Though I had a fantastic teacher for English.  Even she couldn’t get me interested in Shakespeare, Coleridge and DH Lawrence.

So I had a few months of bludging around playing backyard cricket, going to the pool and the movies, hanging out with my girlfriend, and eventually figured I’d better find out about what this working stuff was about.  I had sort of worked a bit before but this full-time business looked a bit different.  It was.  But after a little while I got a job and started earning some money.  That was cool.  I did get accepted to do Environmental Science at the University of Wollongong but it was too hard to get to and I couldn’t afford to live there so I deferred, got used to working and never bothered with study until much later.  How different it all could have been – I missed my first choice (Science at Sydney Uni) by 1 mark out of 500.  C’est la vie.

But now I hear all about targets of X percentage of the population will have at least a Cert X in something-or-other.  Why?  I have a stable work history spanning over 25 years and when I graduated in 2010 with my degree and 9 High Distinctions, 11 Distinctions and 5 Credits from 25 subjects completed I still can’t even get a look in for a junior shit-kicker role in anything to do with my chosen field.  Hell, I’ve recently recruited young people with degrees and postgrad studies into Green Army participant roles because they jumped at the chance not to be only working at Dominos and Aldi.  People with great work ethics.  People who just want a chance to get a start.

So why the big push?  Seriously, I don’t even have a theory for once.

Is it statistics that look good on OECD numbers?  Is it somehow supposed to improve our economy to have all of these highly trained people and no jobs for them to go into?  Or is that how you defer those numbers from adding to unemployment – make them study for a few years and they don’t count on the jobless numbers?  I honestly have no idea at all.

Yet I see so many people now who are successful and happy who left school at Year 10 and did what they wanted to.  Or did an apprenticeship and started their own business at the end of it.  Ok, an apprenticeship is further education, but apprenticeship funding is being chopped all over the place and Government want us all in Uni.  Otherwise they wouldn’t have ripped the guts out of TAFE in NSW and Victoria at least.  High school is mostly about Uni Preparation anyway.  Writing essays and doing calculus have a very limited use in the Real World.  Like I said – Uni Prep.

My son is finished with school now and is heading for TAFE next year to become one of those numbers amongst the Cert III’s and Cert IV’s.  Assuming of course I can afford it.  But he wants to work in a very niche industry, where competition is intense.  He has talent in that area, but it’s just so damn hard to get that dream role now.  I hope he has more luck than I did.  I’ve given up on that dream now.  I don’t even look anymore.  I’m jaded, burnt out and just can’t be arsed to waste my time applying for stuff when I know that I will be culled anyway.  I’ll just look for a job where I can earn a decent wage and rot away until I am allowed to retire or a comet knocks me off or I win Powerball.  The last 2 have similar odds I believe.

It’s funny.  I was told that when I got my first job I got it due to an extra course I did while in Year 12.  I was told when I got a great Business Analyst & Payroll Implementation role that I got it because of my Cert IV in Programming Technology.  And recently I was told that the reason I got the job I have now was because I had this degree I have.  Yet I am an administrator.  A paper shoveller.  A desk jockey.  An organiser.  I do get to drive around a lot now which is ok I guess but the enviro part of the job I do is somewhere between nil and negligible.  Maybe that will change at some point.  I won’t hold my breath.  I have been to a one day conference with landholders and experts – that was kinda fun, but it was more about networking than talking the talk.  And that doesn’t excite me much.

What is the point of having all of these qualified people and not having jobs for those people to work in?  The Government whine that not enough people are studying Science.  Like they haven’t just ripped a load of jobs out of the CSIRO recently – our pre-eminent science organisation. They say they are about building jobs – so why the recent decision to disband 160+ agencies?  And the other cuts to both State and Federal Public Service staff, that just get nastier and nastier every year.  For jobs?  Bollocks.  There are less jobs now, unless you want to work in aged care or hospitality.  then there are plenty.

I’ll never get to do what I want, what I trained for.  I just accept it now.  But it makes me wonder how many others are in that boat with me.  I reckon it’s a big boat.  And it ain’t sailing anywhere worth going.  Our fancy edumakashion isn’t helping us much there.  And I reckon it leaves some of us asking if you want fries with that?  Ugh.  Pass.

This week will be long remembered due to a siege that happened in a downtown coffee shop in the central business district of Sydney.  I used to work just a few blocks from where that took place and the most dangerous thing that ever happened around there before this week was either trying to cross the road or not get molested by charity collectors.  Or bankers.  Yeah, that’d be the worst.

But now, due to one person of questionable sanity and totally abhorrent morals, the character of that area will be forever changed.  And while it is tragic that 2 people lost their lives due to no fault of their own there is another tragedy that will play out here over the course of the next few months.  It will be beyond the ability of many to detect as it will display a little subtlety.  Though I notice that another person of self-professed mental illness being the one and only Russell Brand has already latched on in an oblique way and is publicising it in his own unique fashion on YouTube.  And that is that the T card has been played.  It is the ultimate political get-out-of-jail free card.  Yep, you knew it.  Terror.

Let me be perfectly frank.  Mr Brand is right when he says a terrorist has an agenda.  It is usually chaos and panic, as displayed by the horrific incursion to a Pakistan school in the last couple of days, taking the lives of well over 100 school children.  Or when the Taliban attacked a school almost killing our latest Nobel Peace Prize winner, Malala Yousafzai.  Or the Bali bombings.  Or the constant car-bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan.  You get the idea.  Usually get in quick, do massive damage, and unless they are a suicide bomber, get away quick too.  But this person I will not gratify by naming locked himself in a cafe with more than a dozen hostages, threatened them with a shotgun and made them hold a flag against a window.  No doubt terrifying for the hostages.  And their families and friends.  And the emergency services people who risk their lives every day so we can have a mostly safe society to live, grow and raise our families in.

(Segueway: if you want to call someone a hero – it is those emergency services people.  Not a footballer or an actor.  Someone who does things for others, risking their lives to do it.  They are heroes.  Thank the next one you see – they will appreciate it.)

Back on track now but we know now this person’s history.  We know of their past criminal activities.  Sexual assaults, accomplice to murder.  Attempting to pass himself off as a man of faith.  What bollocks.  Ask a Muslim what they think of what he did.  Did he do anything holy?  Unless you are asking a member of IS or the Taliban I think you will get a resounding NO.

And consequently I compare this person to the fellow who conducted the Port Arthur massacre.  Questionable mindset, armed, dangerous and capable of doing anything.  Was that a terrorist attack?  No.  Though it did create John Howard’s finest moment in the change to gun laws.  That was well done.  (Yes, I give credit where it is due, even to people I cannot stand.  Costello was ace though.)

So, why has the T card been played?  Well, Senator Brandis and my mate, buddy, pal Malcolm Turnbull (seriously, I respect the guy a lot) wants to push through some fairly draconian laws about data retention and the like.  Which Mr Brand picked up on as well in his wee video I mentioned early.  And if we, being the great unwashed and only-respected-around-election-time-general-public, think times are more dangerous because of a single fruit cake then we will accept restrictions on freedom more readily.  So quick lads, run the terror rating up a notch and don’t spare the horses!

I call bullshit.

Remember the horrific school shootings in Columbine, near Denver, USA?  Columbine wasn’t terrorism.  Just 2 kids who lost it completely and did the unthinkable.  What is the relevance?  Well I remember something from the Bowling for Columbine film by Michael Moore.  Yeah, yeah, bear with me here, I know a lot of people don’t like him.  It was a quote from Marilyn Manson.  And it made real sense.  I was going to describe it but sod that, here is the transcript:

MIchael Moore: Do you know the day that Columbine happened, the United States dropped more bombs on Kosovo than any other time during that war?

Marilyn Manson: I do know that and I think that’s really ironic, that nobody said, “Well, maybe the president had an influence on this violent behaviour.  Because that’s not the way the media wants to take it and spin it and turn it into fear.  ‘Cause then you’re watching television, you’re watching the news; you’re being pumped full of fear.  And there’s floods, there’s AIDS, there’s murder.  You cut to commercial, buy the Acura, buy the Colgate.  If you have bad breath, they’re not gonna talk to you. If you got pimples, the girl’s not gonna f*ck you. It’s a campaign of fear and consumption. And that’s what I think that’s it’s all based on, is the whole idea that: keep everyone afraid, and they’ll consume. And that’s really as simple as it can be boiled down to.

Michael Moore: Right.  If you were to talk directly to the kids at Columbine and the people in that community, what would you say to them, if they were here right now?

Marilyn Manson: I wouldn’t say a single word to them. I would listen to what they have to say.  And that’s what no one did.

Ok, that last bit wasn’t strictly relevant to the conversation here but I included it to word you up on Mr Manson.  I don’t like his music at all.  I think he looks pretty awful too.  But that little unscripted one liner gains him many points of respect from me at least.  But the point is that fear is something that can be used by Governments.  Yes it sounds now like I am a paranoid conspiracy nutter but have a think about it.

So when the Government is looking a bit dead in the water and things are not going their way we can have a massive distraction by using a tragedy like the Sydney siege to fuel fear of terrorism.  It keeps people from thinking about domestic issues that they previously cared about.  Like corruption.  Like the climate.  Like jobs.  Like the Budget.  I mean this government made it look like we were being overrun with asylum seekers arriving by boat.  “The sky is falling” type overrun – to create fear.  They’ll take our money through social security, they’ll take all our jobs, they’ll bring their problems, etc, etc.  Go and read about the illegal migration of people into Europe via Italy and learn about a real problem.  Read about Mexicans fleeing drug cartels into the USA for a “better life”.  Read about Syrian and Iraqi refugees now escaping from IS or the civil war in Syria or in some cases both.  Or climate refugees within Bangladesh as the lands in the Bay of Bengal delta become highly saline or just plain inundated due to rising sea levels and more powerful storms where most of the most fertile land in the region is no longer usable.  Then come back, look me in the eye, and tell me we have a refugee problem here.  But that was our FEAR moment for 2013.  Well, now it’s 2014.  Soon to be 2015.  And now we will get the big T being mentioned because of one person, who I cannot categorise as a terrorist. It’s rubbish.  It’s bollocks.  It is utterly incomprehensible to me.  And it is plain wrong.

Though there is one person who is now scaring me: David Leyonhjelm who thinks we should all have guns to protect ourselves.  Now that is putting the fear right into me.  Quick let’s water down gun restriction laws.  Let me just answer that quickly: Let’s not.  How many sieges could we have when people with undiagnosed mental illness, and I’ll bet there are a lot of them, can easily get hold of guns?  How many of our kids do we want dead from accidental shootings?  It’s a lot harder to die from a gunshot if there are NOT MANY GUNS AROUND YOU DAMNED IDIOT.  Honestly, channelling Jeremy Clarkson now but how hard can it be?

So from a siege in Sydney with tragic consequences to a siege mentality around fear, terrorism and avoidance of the issues that are really important to a lot of people.  Really, it means the first siege never ended.  And I fear that there may be more casualties along the way.  The first of them being credibility.  Though my previous rants show how little I gave this government to start with.  Sigh.  I really don’t belong here do I?