Stranger Street

Amongst all the Saxe-Coburg streets in Brunswick, there is the peculiarly-named “Stranger Street”. I’m never quite sure whether this would best refer to the alienation of living in inner-city Melbourne, where most of us pass one another in utter ignorance of identity, or if the street itself is odder than the others around.

Brunswick certainly has its oddities. Early morning it is abuzz with the bin men, delivery men, and commuters hurtling their way to university or work. By mid morning, the Nonnas and Yia-yias are out, antalgic but armed with study sandals, robust cardigans which hide elbows of steel, and shopping trolleys. As midday approaches, “old Brunswick” emerges, replete with monologues, tics, and clothing combinations that even the most avant-garde fashion student would struggle to concoct from Savers.

Through the afternoon, one sees some pretty unusual things. A man on a Penny Farthing, with an anachronistic flashing red light on the bike (but at least within the law). A man on a recumbent bike fashioned from a couple of wheels, a drive chain, two planks and a crate. Further up in Coburg, a man dressed in what I can only describe as a wizard’s garb. And then last week, a man who stopped me in the street to enquire if I had, earlier in the week, attached my bike lock in such a way as to entrap his water bottle. 

Well, really.

Is this the sort of thing that is so desperately important that one would think about it for several days and then proceed to stop a stranger in the street?

In Brunswick, yes.

Longest hiatus in blog history?

Nine years. Nine! And in that period I have gone from being a final year law student to a final year medical student, with some other stuff in the intervening years. Perhaps no one is more surprised than me.

In the spirit of displacement activity, I have also taken up reading legal philosophy, despite this being my most loathed subject when I was both a philosophy and a law student. Plus ça change.

After the gruelling - not to mention largely gruesome - experience of three exams in three days, I celebrated my freedom last night with...

A headache.

One could debate as to whether this constitutes an anti-climax or not.

I do however have a nice pile of books to enlighten and enrich my mind (and take my fingers away from that harsh mistress, the keyboard).

Today I read Maureen Dowd's Are Men Necessary? Obviously the title is rhetorical, because there's a very short answer to be given - shorter than 330 pages - if the question was literal.

Next: finishing off Brideshead Revisited, marching on to Elizabeth Wilson's Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale (Blessed be lucid writing), Geoffrey Robertson's The Tyrannicide Brief, Buber's Between Man and Man and maybe, if I can rustle up a brain cell or two, some Adorno.

Thank god, says the atheist, there are other worlds readily accessible via a book.

Meanwhile, two good links for amusement.
Roll On Friday, for 'bored solicitors'. And bored law students, too!
Buglear Bate. A firm of solicitors with the by-line: Leases, transfers, conveyances, indentures, vesting assents: We love 'em.

The end of the ABC as we know it.

Windschuttle appointed to ABC board.

As I am foaming at the mouth, constructive commentary is a bit beyond me right now. So all I'll say is, thank christ I'm leaving the country as soon as is practicable. Only in Howard's Australia would it seem okay to appoint someone like that, especially as they already have Albrechtson.

Dear god. Imagine if the BBC appointed David Irving as one of their governors, or Nick bloody Griffin. But no, this is 'fair and balanced'.

There I was, thinking that my pimpin' of Pimp My Snack would have nothing to do with law, and yet lo and behold, the site received a C&D letter from Viacom over the weekend, because Viacom allegedly owns the trade mark to 'Pimp My...'

And so now the website is called 'Pimp That Snack'.

All in all, lots of interesting questions raised about how Australian trade mark law would approach this, and just in time for my exam revision, too!

Pimping. Or should that be pimpin'?

Possibly the best site I've seen all day: Pimp My Snack. Glorious, if not for the slightly nauseous.

More controversially, on to the heavy media coverage of Australia's first 'casualty' in Iraq - a soldier who managed to shoot himself whilst cleaning his gun.

Now, I know how to clean a gun. Funnily enough, the first thing you do is make sure there's no ammunition in it. Imagine that? I would've thought that, in the Army, they'd teach you such elementary things. Which is slightly worrying, given the much bigger guns they're also playing with.

What I don't get is why the TV and newspapers (okay, ABC and The Age) decided that was terribly important news. They've treated this bloke as though he'd died in battle when in fact he was simply the latest contender for a Darwin Award. It seems even more appalling to talk about 'Australia's Iraq casualty' on the eve of ANZAC day. It's not bloody Gallipoli, is it? It's not the bloody Kokoda trail. It's just sheer stupidity. Maybe that IS the Australian spirit.

I am apparently the only person saying this. Is everyone else too scared? If this had been an Irish/American solider the story would've featured in the Odd Spot.

ETA: Well bugger. Brendan Nelson's said the soldier wasn't cleaning his gun. On the other hand, it WAS loaded with live ammunition when it shouldn't have been.

And this, children, is why I am all in favour of gun control laws.

Assorted links; minimal commentary

1. Brian Walters SC - president of Liberty Victoria, also involved in the Gunns 20 litigation (and AWB!) - gave a lunchtime speech at the Melbourne Uni Law School yesterday on problems faced by public interest groups when faced with a suit from corporations and bully-boy governments. A number of points came out that are disconcerting enough to repeat. One, is that community groups aren't listened to by courts - c.f. the US, where the ACLU and other organisations don't face the same issues of proving standing. Two, that they're doubly financially disadvantaged in funding or defending litigation, by having limited funds and aren't subject to tax concessions for legal action like corporations. (And in the instance of cases against governments, don't have a vast public purse to pilfer from.) Three, is the great big joke of our Attorneys-General as giving proper legal advice whilst also being members of Parliament. Conflict of interest was nicely evinced by the Port Philip dredging case, where the A-G (Rob Hulls) was also Minister for Planning. Very independent.

One wonders whether it would be better to have an appointed, non-Parliamentarian person in the role of A-G, as in the US and UK. Particularly the UK, where Lord Goldsmith - for all his shady Iraq advice - was at least an experienced lawyer and judge before his appointment.

So who do we have to keep the government in check? No one. Can we, as citizens, actually have our voices heard? Apparently not. Voting in elections simply isn't sufficient. Vote them out? Fine - but the damage is already done. We have no way of keeping the government accountable whilst it is in office. There is precious little access to media, and the media itself often self-censors (I'd give a reference for proof, but it's mere personal communication from someone in the know) rather than face a phone call from someone in the government. Lord knows I've written letters to The Age over the years, and not had them published.

2. On a lighter note - a real life Vicky Pollard. Of course, there are thousands of 'em, but it's always amusing to see someone living down to the stereotype.

3. Sir Anthony Mason on a Bill of Rights - judges are trustworthy? I'd certainly agree they're more trustworthy than politicians. The fact they're not elected - thus do not have a vested interest in populist, knee-jerk policies - is a good thing. And it is naive to suggest that we have a truly representative government. As long as MPs follow the party line, as long as the public is not involved in political and governmental affairs, as long as there are pre-selection battles and secret backroom deals, we have no representative government.

We certainly have no responsible government. We are treated with contempt by the PM and his Ministers - I won't even start on the misnomer of 'the Opposition' (opposition to what?). And the catchphrase of the Howard administration is surely one which decries all responsibility and knowledge...

I wrote an essay last year on autonomous action and decided that responsibility - being taken as responsible - derived not from subjective autonomy but how others view the act itself. Now I think that applies even more pertinently to the government, particularly as it is a product of collective attitudes and ideals (even if those attitudes and ideals are, well, wrong. I'm no relativist.)

In any case, if you've ever seen a judge speak and then heard a politician, it isn't hard to work out who is more on the ball. There's always talk about making sure judges are sensitive to minorities and so on - such a high burden is placed. No such thing on politicians - surely no less important.

4. For once in my life, I wish I was French. Seriously. They may have a mad Interior Minister (I'm sure someone funnier could make jokes about the title alone), but at least people still have the guts and the freedom to have a proper riot and get arrested.

Okay. Enough ranting. Back to thrills and spills of reading.