Bicycle Riding Dole Bludger Stopped by Hamilton City's Finest.

The clients, as they are known, of WINZ Hamilton East were treated to a random act of state-sponsored street theatre last week, courtesy of Hamilton City's Finest.  It could have gone unnoticed but the reception area was so full, the automatic doors wouldn’t close.  Standing room only, it was a beggars banquet minus the banquet, a wearied, burdened audience of 40-50 year olds.  Tired, cynical, dejected.

The collective quiet was broken by the “woop” and honk of a police siren, a patrol car shepherding the offender to the roadside.  It was a young man riding an old bike.  He was unshaven, wearing jandals, torn jeans, t-shirt, leather waistcoat, rasta-beads and a  khaki shoulder bag.  He wore nothing on his head except for an impressive afro, reminiscent of the late great 1970s.

We know about judging books by their covers, about the difference between appearances and realities.   But the audience saw him immediately as one of their own, a man with neither work nor money.  They understood that the price on his un-helmeted head would take out the best part of his week’s money.  Most of them however, didn’t see anything at all.  They were staring into the tough industrial grade carpet under their rough-shod feet, gazing into their own certain futures.

Egypt Bans Internet, People Meet in Person, President Resigns.

The news is out and everywhere – the web, the net, cyperspace, the blogosphere, the cloud, all reverberating with the resignation of Egypt’s Mubarak.  Social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter have been given much credit for making it all happen, for galvanizing a discontented people, bringing their critical mass to a boil, finally driving them out on the street in resolute protest.  But how did that happen in a country where all internet was reportedly switched off?  How did the internet bring revolution to a people without internet?

From the corner it looks like it was the very absence of the internet, the inability to Tweet or Facebook, that compelled people to network in the most social way of all: to go outside, meet people, wave a flag and get mad.  It got them out from in front of their computer screens, into the street and talking to each other face to face.  In the "wireless-less" space of Tahrir Square the most social of all social media appeared reborn – the mass protest.

The “Pharoah” has now gone and announcing his departure, hard-man Omar Suleiman invoked special powers: “May God . . . help us all”.  With the military now in charge, and many of its generals on the former payroll of the ex-president, historical trends might suggest the worst is yet to come.  However, Egypt so far has managed to avoid many negative trends to a degree.  With good people at the levers, the new Egypt could prove revolutionary in so many more ways than one.  But without them, they will need all the help that God can get.

Anything You Want To Be.

It’s a new year.  A time for making decisions.  These are the times when the world is full of choice.  Your own decisions.  Whatever is happening right now in your life is what you have chosen to happen.  If you want anything you can have it.  If you want to do something you have the choice to do it or not to do it.  That’s it.  You can do anything you want to do.  You can be anything you want to be.  Choose it.  Do it.  If you want it bad enough, it will happen.

Unless of course, it can’t happen.  And unless of course you can’t do it, and unless of course you can’t be it.  There is a young woman for example who lives in a third world country who has recently been made redundant.  She’s one of the lucky ones.  She has a university degree in Marketing and actually had a job for four years as a PA to the CEO.  The company went bankrupt and now there’s nothing.  Does she want another job?  Has she tried to get another job?  Oh yes.  Can she get one? No.  At least not yet.  Not soon enough.

She wants to relocate to New Zealand or Australia, to land a good position in a stable firm, to advance her career and settle into a life less desperate.  But with her father murdered when she was a young girl, her mother barely getting by as a caregiver in Dubai, and her left support her younger sister through high school then varsity, her options are narrowed.  Those blessed with the natural born freedoms, do the kindness of urging the less fortunate: "do what YOU want to do,  be what YOU want to be.  It's your choice."  Meanwhile, the real people of the real world be who they have to be, in order to do what they must.

Blog Love?

Blog love is being bandied about willy nilly so rather than contribute to the noise . . . here's my 2 cents:
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