Discussion on discard. When all is broken down and no bucks to be made, the flimsy unfolds, lines obscured, mechanised heavyweights trundle steelily by.

If it was in oceans, would those passing be spared any need to look ahead at profits of gloom?

See: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-24/clean-underway-after-los-angeles-train-robberies/100777006

I agree entirely with Chris Overland that “we collectively ought to have sufficient insight and humility to accept that we have an obligation to help out those who live in 'shithole' countries, not merely through charity, but by a conscious, systemic and systematic effort to help them reach their true socio-economic potential.”

The bit that sticks in my craw is the inequity that exists at a level that is deeply disturbing.

To observe a young boy dying from the ravages of tuberculosis 200km from the Australian border kindles a deep sense of sadness and outrage at the inequity.

I cannot separate the image of our citizens arriving as FIFO (fly in - fly out) workers at mines across PNG from the hunter gatherer family standing in front of me to whom the boy belongs.

Workers shepherded straight off the plane onto buses going to the mess, donga or their first world jobs. And during their 'swing' they can be certain they won’t miss a single game of footy or be exposed to anything 'outside the fence'.

And the boy. There is nothing we can do. The nearest health centre is days away and he will probably die before being assessed for treatment.

This is not to bag the workers. But to my mind the system which they benefit from represents the worst aspects of our inequitable and imperialist world.

And comments you hear at the mess too often confirm that former President Trump’s ruminations on “shithouse countries” expressed commonly held views.

Each time I hear our political classes refer to “our Pacific family” I wince.

This statement is crass beyond all imagining. The fact it is uttered at all given the circumstances only serves to show how conveniently ignorant we are, or worse how opportunist and amoral we have become.

This is not about some misplaced 'dogooder' zeal. Rather the notion that if you wouldn’t tolerate the death of your child or sister from the abject failure of the health system, why would you tolerate it 200km beyond our border.

And for how much longer do you expect those on the other side of that imaginary line to tolerate it as well?

We are a rich nation that benefits directly from their resources. Are we contributing anything worthwhile in return?

Are we doing enough to facilitate the type of socio-economic empowerment that provides people with degree of financial independence and a pathway towards improved health and education services?

No – we are not. Our models of development assistance are demonstrably ineffective. We would rather focus on offshore camps in which to incarcerate other desperate people.

We are now witnessing the cost of inequity across the globe. The price to be paid for the creeping calamity of global heating that is driving human misery on an increasing scale.

Millions are being forced ever further to look for a place with reliable fresh water, or from the ravages of conflict arising from shrinking resources, a place where they can simply exist.

The notion that we in our privileged bubble can turn a blind eye and solve it by increasing Border Force and naval patrols is mind-numbingly myopic.

It is clear that our survival is becoming more and more dependent and intertwined with others with whom we share an increasingly over stretched planet. Where access to clean water rather than which movie to watch is the pressing order of the day.

As Chris correctly says, it is about how we assist them to achieve their socio-economic potential and what we likewise need to do. That’s not charity, it’s common sense.

Our political class are not prepared to confront these realities with anything like the intellectual rigour or scale required. They can’t even make sensible decisions about our relationships with our nearest neighbours. There is nothing to be proud of about this. It is painful and cringeworthy to watch.

I fear that if we continue along the path we have created for ourselves. The product of exploitation of resources and citizens on a global scale, we are in for an almighty reckoning when the chickens come home to roost.

Almost four hundred years ago John Donne penned these prophetic words.

“Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”

It is nearing a crescendo now.

My dear William, It would be somewhat remiss of me not to remind you that the architect of the 1963 Great Train Robbery in the UK was an Ulsterman:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Train_Robbery_(1963)

The illegitimate daughter of Satan was an avid acolyte of Austrian-British economist Friedrich Hayek's 'Road to Serfdom'.

Hayek's book, beloved of conservatives, embraced the Gipper's sophism of trickle-down economics, which included a determined cull of centralised planning:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom

Unfettered markets and the inevitable collapse of capitalism's gigantic festering Ponzi scheme have since undermined any skerrick of social order and degenerated into a pernicious paradigm of gangster capitalism.

It has created an oppressive society under elective dictatorships with the tyrannical serfdom of the individual. It is ironic that Hayek claimed these evils were some of the adverse consequences of socialism.

A question might arise at the words "duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour".

Firstly, however, on Thatcher's logic, the 'ourselves' and 'our' has plurality that the listener and reader might choose to comprehend as of a singular, thus I suggest 'each one of us".

Secondly, consider that heroic evidenced of humans in time of disaster or trouble, when folk as individuals (and possibly in company and not only at battlefields) do what is apparent in the interests of others before sheltering each of self.

Thirdly, in the oft quoted "love your neighbour as yourself" (seems of singular focus) from Leviticus, the matter of which is first, vanishes.

Here is Thatcher’s full quote, which Paul linked to but did not transcribe:

“Who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business….”

Thatcher uttered these words to an interviewer in 1987 and since then, as Paul complains, ‘there is no such thing as society’ has been frequently cited on its own devoid of context. Paul and other defenders of Thatcher say this is unfair because this is not what she meant as the rest of the quote shows. Could this be so?

At this point I should note that, after the full quote including those words was published in a woman’s magazine, Thatcher got her press secretary to issue a clarification. As these things happen, it was too late. The dreadful words were already racing around the world unstoppably.

When such deliberate or accidental blunders (nowadays attracting that awful word 'misspeak') happen to well-known people, as so often they do, I found when advising many of them in my former career, the original words were accepted with such alacrity only because they so neatly fitted the character or the views of the person who uttered them.

So the grab, ‘“Who is society? There is no such thing!’ - taken out of context to mean what one writer has called “shorthand for a crassly individualist worldview: that prized selfishness, greed and the trashing of social obligations” – was seen to articulate people's preconceptions of exactly who and what Margaret Thatcher was.

She was making the point, as Paul writes, as do other apologists, “that people have to accept some responsibility for themselves instead of just blaming the government and expecting it to be responsible for everything”. That could be a fair interpretation except for this....

The emphasis on the apologists to say Thatcher meant ‘society’ to refer to ‘government’ is more than a little convenient and contrived, especially as Thatcher used government in its precise meaning just 18 words later.

No, in my view, Thatcher did mean exactly what she said in that interview. That in her belief system, there are men, women, families, neighbours and governments but “there is no such thing” as society.

The full context shows this as clearly as the grab shows it. And so did her rush to clarify (that is, to attach a different meaning to) the words as soon as she, or one of her aides, realised she had invoked a dangerous idea in the UK’s political and economic climate of that time.

The ex post facto interpretation that Paul offers as the ‘true’ meaning of the words has never succeeded in covering up what Thatcher meant, and nor should it. That is because what Thatcher’s policies portrayed in action, in objective reality, was precisely her worldview, as three decades later it was Trump’s, and arguably, today, Morrison’s.

A good and frank analysis of the mess the world now finds itself in.

Re Trump - Nothing unexpected there just another opportunist trying to embellish his over inflated ego by pandering the less baser instincts of modern US society.

What can one expect from a gentleman who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and reared to be a complete sociopathic arsehole, a trait regarded by his father as being a prerequisite for success in the business world.

How people fell for his snake oil presentation still amazes me as the events that occurred indicates the complete reverse end of the human existence spectrum to the reality play role of those ‘ poor” good citizens he purported to be on side with.

Maybe the answer lies in his grandfather’s lineage as a refugee from Germany in the mid 18th century when German nationalism was on the rise as was bigotry against the Jews.

Maybe that German trait of stoicism also has come into play in creating this obnoxious type of human being that the good old USA has had to deal with.

Wouldnt it be more effective to help the shithole country occupants in their own country.