Her voice was breaking, the tremor rippling through her words.
A mining boom with unintended consequence.
A few years ago I spent a month down a hole, jackhammering into sapphire bearing sediment so ancient that no human ever breathed its dust or walked that layered river bed.
Sapphire - in Central Queensland - is a moonscape of hummocky hills. Many of the miners live wherever in whatever...... and so it’s been for donkey’s years.
That was until the huge mining boom saw droves of cashed up workers willing to pay astronomical sums for very ordinary houses and the locals find that they’re frozen out of the market.
Then there are the masses of fly in, fly out workers who bring no benefit to the local communities through which they casually pass.
Our interest rates are high and we’re told that it’s to keep inflation under control - an inflation due to a mining boom which directly benefits very few.
So the ordinary citizen with a mortgage is paying higher interest rates to keep a mining boom in check and the voice that is breaking belongs to a woman who clearly sees that her children will not be able to afford to live in the small community in which three generations of her family have lived.
We’re not talking about Palm Beach and millionaire mansions but small towns way out in the bush. Places where, perhaps, few would have chosen to settle.
Economics is voodoo magic. Print money based on nothing tangible and the money in existence based on something of value is debased and diminished. Pretty straight forward but obviously not.
Orwellian double speak.
‘We should be providing no fly zones, safe havens and weapons.’
Syria is today’s target. Done Libya, done Iraq, about to ‘do’ Iran but we’ll leave the most repressive regimes in place.
A fragmented Middle East reduced to tribal and religious factions is too busy surviving to be a threat to Israel - poor little Israel.
Poor little America to deserve such a friend.
There’s many a strange aspect to Israel’s policies towards its neighbours. I don’t know any of them. A glance at a map suggests that the whole area could be made uninhabitable without the use of nuclear weapons....it’s not a large country ....but why would any of your enemies want to drop a nuclear weapon almost literally in their own back yard.
Talk about ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face.’
Of course, if the whole area - including Israel - is considered ‘expendable’ then the picture changes.
Played three sad and sober songs at the monthly songwriter night and that’s it for awhile.