Dear Anti,

I've got a better suggestion.

You keep your dog, drain your pool, turn
off your water and any other drips that
take your fancy. Contribute to society
as your conscience dictates. Persuade
all like-minded people to do the same.

While I shall continue to do the Indian Rain-Dance
and encourage the government in their pursuit of
water production, catchment, and storage projects.
As well as encouraging the education of parents
and children in water safety - at home, in the rivers,
and on the beach.

We lament when we have floods and destruction - but
make no effort to contain and divert the rivers inland
that cause those floods. Farmers complain they have no
water, while hundreds of rivers flow into the ocean.
It's time that state governments faced reality and
responded accordingly.

If the Snowy could be diverted inland to produce electricity,
we can just as easily pipe water through the Great Dividing
Range to feed inland rivers.

California did it in the 1930s/40s - surely we can catch
up?

Foxy: "While I shall continue to do the Indian Rain-Dance"

Oh. So you are the reason. It has pissing here down for 2 weeks now. Enough of the Indian Rain-Dance's already.

Dear rstuart,

Your request to stop my Indian Rain Dancing
requires mature and careful consideration.

Much as I'd like to take action immediately,
I feel that it is in an area which cannot,
in the light of the present water circumstances,
be accorded a higher priority than other important
areas of water activities.

Well, I guess mist of you by now would have twigged to the fact that this thread was somewhat satirical in nature.

It was intended to highlight the sorts of stupid non-arguments that are put forward to justify massive intrusion into the lives of ordinary people who may have done nothing whatever to deserve it.

There is a thread in the articles section that was started just after this one http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10006, which is to do with the Family Law and the desire of some women to have the law reforms that have worked so well wound back. The posts make interesting reading for those of you who were offended by my satirical suggestions with respect to water activities.

With so much of our legislation now designed to "protect" one group or another, it is inevitable that some of those who are not within a preferred group will suffer as a direct consequence.

The question I'd like to ask is this: do we, as a nation, see it as the role of government to pick "winners and losers" when formulating legislation, or should law be framed in such a way as to allow maximum personal freedom with responsibility for abuse of that freedom?

There have been numerous examples of nanny-state legislation given by respondents to this thread, all of which take away the ability of individuals to make their own decisions in their own interest. Are we, as individuals, so poor at decision-making, or indeed so important as individuals that the State must intervene to save us from ourselves?

I highlighted "think of the children" as my appeal to emotion, because it is used so effectively by some groups to stifle any rational consideration of their preferred hobbyhorse. It is used to give the most egregious suggestions a veneer of authoritas, while avoiding proper examination. I reject it.

Dear Anti,

We have always been a stratified society.
From the early history of this country
for example - the vote was restricted
to adult white males who owned property.
Women were not permitted to vote until
early in the twentieth century, and until
fairly recently were generally paid much
less than men for doing the identical job.
Our Indigenous people didn't get the right to
vote until the 1970s. And, despite our
professed commitment to human equality,
we have today vast numbers of people living
below the official poverty line.

Our society remains a visibly stratified one,
marked by a very unequal distribution of
wealth, power, and prestige.

The historical extension of voting rights to
the poor, women, our Indigenous People, represents
progress in one direction, but this has been offset
by the growth of huge federal bureaucracies and
influential private interest groups, leading to
a concentration of power at the upper levels of
government and the corporate economy.

Many people would agree that they are excluded
from much of the important decision making in our
society; opinion polls regularly show large
majorities agreeing that government is run for the
benefit of a few private interests looking after
themselves.

The history of tax laws reveals long contained loopholes
that were inserted under pressure from powerful
interests. In theory, the tax system should be progressive,
the more you earn, the more you should be taxed.

In practice, the income of the wealthy has always received
favourable treatment. Until recent tax reforms, many
super-rich paid little - or even nothing - in income
taxes, quite legally.

I guess the final analysis is that in our society
inequality is built into the social structure. The
consequence is social stratification, in which
entire categories of our population have different
life chances.

Foxy

Have you read Noel Pearson's address to the Writers' festival? This blog has the link and a few bits:

http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2009/09/noel-pearsons-speech-to-writers.html