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When the FU vote wins every election, what is to be done? Phillip Frazer
Say NO to mould!
Made in Lismore. Available locally. www.simplycleanhome.com.au/store-locator/
CHESS
by
Ian Rogers
The decision this week by the World Anti-Doping Agency to ban Russia for four years from all major sporting events was always going to affect chess more profoundly than any other sport. Not only have players from Russia (and before it the Soviet Union) dominated chess for almost a century, but Russia runs the world body FIDE and hosts many major tournaments and matches. Fortunately for FIDE, the WADA ban has been sprinkled with so many loopholes that major figures in Russia have been confident enough to say that their plans for 2020 will be largely unaffected. Head of the Russian Chess Federation Andrey Filatov immediately declared that all major events planned for Russia over the coming year – the Rapid and Blitz World Championship, Women’s World Championship match, Candidates Tournament and World Chess Olympiad – will take place as usual because they were already contracted to Russia. (The WADA ban seems to have a carve out to allow this.) Arkady Dvorkovich, the FIDE President and former Russian Deputy Prime Minister, has also stated that any ban on Russian government officials or employees from holding office in a sporting organisation do
not apply to him because he is no longer a public servant. FIDE and Russian drug tests since chess became subject to WADA rules have never produced a positive result (unlike domestic tests in countries including Germany and Thailand), enabling FIDE to proclaim chess as a ‘clean’ sport. This clean status will enable FIDE to declare all Russian players exempt from the ban. Of course like many sports, chess has plenty of skeletons in the drug cupboard. Evidence suggesting that at least one positive drug test has been covered up, and that the FIDE Doping Hearing Panel acted corruptly in another two cases, has never been investigated. The only slight embarrassment for FIDE might come at the closing ceremony of the Moscow Chess Olympiad in August when the Russian players go up to receive their medals, given that the WADA ban does not allow the Russian anthem to be played or the flag displayed. However FIDE’s business-as-usual plan only goes so far. While 2020 tournaments may be locked in, there is no excuse for breaching WADA’s ban by hosting events in Russia in 2021 or future years. Expect plenty of events like the 2018 World Championship match, which was held in London but sponsored entirely by Russian interests, with free vodka for VIPs.
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16 The Byron Shire Echo 'ĕĈĕŔćĕſ Ǩǯǽ ǩǧǨǰ
Last Thursday 29 per cent of Brits voted Conservative, 22 per cent Labour, 8 per cent Liberal-Democrats, 2.6 per cent Scottish National, 1.8 per cent Greens, and 1.3 Brexit – and 33 per cent of didn’t vote for anyone. So the Brit elections were not as close as ours was six months ago (Labor plus Greens got 340,000 more votes than the Coalition), and not as close as America’s last presidential election, in which Clinton got three million more votes than Trump, but lost due to weird historical rules. Clinton and Trump each won the votes of only 30 per cent of American adults, because the remaining 40 per cent didn’t vote, half of them because they weren’t allowed and half because they didn’t show up. In the UK about a third or 33 per cent didn’t vote and in Australia, where we’re fined between $20 and $78 for not voting, 10 per cent still didn’t. Why are so many of us voting for the bosses’ party? Because the mass media and the politicians are biased toward the bosses,
because that’s who owns and operates them. And why are even more of us protest voting or not voting at all? Because we’re pissed off that we’re barely able to rent a home let alone buy one, that a good job is nigh impossible to find, that prospects for a better life look worse by the day, and now we’re all peering through the fires and floods at an environmental catastrophe destroying the planet in our kids’ lifetimes.
FuckYou votes Which is why the single biggest block of voters these
days, all over the globe, is composed of people essentially voting none-ofthe-above – aka the FuckYou vote. Trump’s numbers were swollen by his claim to being an outsider (which he continues to claim) deflecting pissed-off voters from seeing that his policies are even worse than those of the Washington insiders. Boris and Brexit harvested a lot of FU votes by promising a program that amounts to ‘we’ll say FU to Europe, and to the London wogs, and girly men who’ve ruined our country.’ Similarly, a majority of Australian undecideds voted
for the coalition as a lesser evil, also a less expensive evil than not voting at all. I don’t think many of them really thought ‘Gee the coalition has such excellent policies, and ScoMo is a really inspiring bloke.’ And why has it come to this? Because not one of the big-time parties – Liberal/ Labor here, Conservative/ Labour in the UK, or Democratic/Republican in the USA – dares to admit what’s really happened since the 1980s: that the bosses sent the majority of jobs to lower-wage countries, smashed the leftover jobs into gigs and temps so we, the workers, are all alone and day-to-day, and they’re giving all the future jobs to robots or Artificial Intelligences. And yes the world is cooking and choking on shit because the powerful people never look at the common good or the long-term game, because, frankly, they don’t give a damn. Is there a better option than the FU? How about Greta’s How Dare U? But turn that into a plan of action, as in Let’s Dare To!
What are tiny homes the answer to? Q I read with interest, and some despair, the article (December 11) proposing tiny homes as an ‘affordable’ homes solution. The accompanying picture shows the limitations of this popular trend. The tiny home is a mobile solution best suited to emergency, short term, or tourist accommodation. In NSW granny flats of up to 60m2 are a ‘permanent structure’ and offer better housing than a tiny home, whilst complying with the Building Code of Australia. The lack of long term social cohesion and potentially inadequate lifestyle generated by clustering large numbers of random minimalist structures is not conducive to the health of our communities, social integration or to the occupants’ personal growth, in what inevitably are overcrowded substandard conditions. The likelihood of ghetto style outcomes is very real in our monetarist based culture. We can do better than this. I have spent a lifetime designing smaller homes and group dwellings and I am prepared to liaise with and offer access to this body of work pro-bono to ‘not for profits’ or individuals in need. Yes, we need local government to facilitate exemptions or modifications to what is allowable under their DCP and LEP provisions. This is ultimately controlled at State government level but wholesale changes to the Building Code of Australia are NOT needed and are unlikely to be approved in any great rush.
Yes, we need suitably identified land. We need an integrated design for a community that meets the needs of all occupants; a community not built around the car, but around people. We need an integrated social structure; old, young, wealthy, not so wealthy, families and singles (over 50 per cent of all households are two people or fewer). So we need ‘smaller’ homes that feel like big homes that engage with the environment. Self powering, water efficient homes with water storage and waste management and with access to services, plus community gardens, workshops etc. Regarding housing affordability, the problem does not rest in the ‘construction cost’ for homes. Building is always affordable, or can be, what is not affordable is the land. A base cost that is inflated (because it can be developed) plus council imposed contributions and infrastructure, all marked up from a total that includes huge bank loan interest rates PLUS a huge margin for the developer. We need Council to access crown land or other low cost land devoid of ‘developer’ margins. We need a housing (rental) co-operative set up at the local level to oversee and own the project (and manage rental and emergency properties). This removes the ‘greed/ profit’ motive. We need sweat equity opportunities for part ownership of homes; we need
guaranteed long term tenure for rental properties at ‘reasonable’ rentals. We need private ownership as well, both from the get go and as a transition during rental and, yes, we need emergency housing, as a transition. The local community can do this, it just takes the will. Phil Anstey Anstey Homes P/L Casuarina Q I was encouraged by the news that Byron Shire Council is contemplating tiny house villages to assist those who are experiencing housing stress. These types of villages work well in many places including the US and Canada and there is every reason they would in the Byron Shire also. Starting with a pilot tiny house village we could create something that addresses homelessness and sustainability. Tiny house villages present all sorts of opportunities socially and environmentally – everything from integrating us all into the community, supporting each other, living off-grid, to rain water collection, permaculture gardens, and on-site waste management. Ideally these initiatives would be offered by the state government, but with homelessness growing, it would be heartening to see the Byron Shire Council move forward with a tiny house village. Lucinda Scarman Mullumbimby
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