Since the Election - despite this blog post - I have been literally dumb-struck by the audacity and hubris of the Abbott Government. I say dumb-struck because I fully intended to maintain a watchful vigil via my blog on the expected outrages of the new Liberal Government (and the word "liberal" really sticks in my throat - it should be the  "Libertarian" Party).  But with the exception of this one outing, I have been unable to find the words.  I haven't known where to begin. There is so much to say, it is impossible to know where to start.

I'm not sure if this has been the Liberal strategy - some sort of Tory Shock-and-Awe type effort, but the list of outrages is too long to note here. Fortunately, these guys have kept an excellent tally.

I think where I have been going wrong is trying to itemise the crimes of this new government - and so in the interest of actually getting something written, I'm not going to do that. In the areas of the environment, industrial relations, refugees, regulation, foreign aid as Tanya Plibersek said at a party BBQ I attended yesterday, "Day after day we are seeing Tony Abbott attack the things we care so deeply about."

So while my blogging ambitions failed, I had no other way to vent spleen about the horror of these last 6 months but to shout abuse at the TV news like a madman and rant and rave on Twitter. I soon realised this was not a healthy way forward and was getting me no where, but at the same time I don't want to disconnect from the debate. It is at times like this that protest and dissent are at their most important.

But in the last week I have found tremendous solace in immersing myself in among brethren. On Sunday I attended the March in March, which while somewhat futile (particularly because of its somewhat misguided demand for the Governor General to sack the Government - which is never going to happen) did serve to be quite cathartic. Marching amid 12,000 others all equally as outraged just made me feel like I wasn't alone. Even the sign pictured above seemed to perfectly articulate my dumb-struckness.

But the cathartic effect of "being with your own" was later perfectly articulated by Billy Bragg on the Tuesday at a small gig he did in the Student Bar of Sydney University. "The most important part of my job," he said, "is to make you feel that you're not the only one who gives a shit about this stuff."

The similarities between Abbott and Billy Bragg's nemesis in chief are stark and being in the same room with him brought back so many memories. Thatcher was put on the agenda for Bragg the very day he arrived when Gina Rinehart went to press with the idea that "Australia needs a good dose of Thatcherism".  This struck a chord with Billy naturally - "when your Government vilifies those drawing welfare, that's Thatcherism right there," he told the March in March crowd, pointing out that he was already noticing plenty of parallels with the dark days of 80s Britain.  

Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek at the Supporters BBQ put it well - "what I love about the Labor Party is that we all share the same values" and as I chatted with those who had turned out the value that came through most strongly was "social justice" and I realised that Abbott's assault on that was what was giving me so much irritation, and causing so much anger.  So many of his initiatives seek to erode social justice in favour of Liberal Party cronies looking to make easy bucks.  (I think the imminent repeal of financial reforms thought neccessary after the Storm and Opus Prime scandals are the best example of this.) 

Bragg talked about how divisive Thatcher was, and I wished he had drawn the parallel more strongly that Tony Abbott is also incredibly divisive.  He doesn't govern for Australia, he doesn't even govern for those that elected him. He governs for his party and the vested interests that got him into government.  He has no interest in social justice, he has no concern for the vulnerable in society, he doesn't even have any regard for the future Australia beyond his tenure.  As the cuts and austerity and the demonising of the vulnerable rain down, said Billy, you have to "make sure there's a reckoning" as he broke into the old Woody Guthrie number, "All you fascists are bound to lose".   

Question is: as Tony Abbott divides us, which side are you on?

Finally, his most helpful advice - from a veteran protester and Socialist - was "to organise".  In between a rendition of "Which side are you on?" and "There is power in a Union" he stressed the importance of organising.  "The absolute key to protest and change is: you have to organise," he said. Whinging and complaining is not going to achieve anything. Democratically removing a party from power is the only way to channel that energy.  I might blog as I go, but ultimately, attending branch meetings, protesting the issues and getting out the vote at elections is what it will take.  All this to the March in March chant:

"Hey hey, ho ho; One-Term-Tony has got to go!"

E·ly·si·um  (-lz-m, -lzh-)

On a weekend where the England cricket team yet again encountered spectacular and humiliating disaster in Australia, I had the opportunity to visit the scenes of two other spectacular disasters where supposedly superior attacking sides allowed complacency and hubris to let defending sides unpick them with calamitous results.  Obviously though, the price to pay at Agincourt and The Somme was far more grave than a loss of pride and the possible concession of a small urn of burnt wood.

"And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks, That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day." Henry V, William Shakespeare

It's all coming back to me now, three months into an Abbott Government.  The fact that Howard Old Hand Alexander Downer is suddenly in the media every other day again hammers home the inescapable fact that the Abbott Government is "Howard 2.0".  

In my first year in Australia - in 2001-2001 - I was led to believe that Howard was not long for this world.  Then the Tampa and 9/11 happened and we were saddled with another three years.  Then Mark Latham happened and yet another!  Finally he was evicted and the way I felt about living in Australia changed.  It was no longer in denial of a shameful Government.  Despite all of the leadership tom-foolery, I was always happy living under a left-of-centre Government that was at least always steered by compassion and a mission of equity, even if it wasn't always able to execute effectively on it.

Yet in only three months I find myself back in the Howard years.  An air of contempt, arrogance and hubris.  Lets have a quick round up:

1. Contempt for the Planet - Environment Minister Greg Hunt (although that's not his real title, there isn't even an environment or climate change minister, he's responsible for "development") demonstrated spectacular contempt for international efforts to solve the world's most pressing existential problem.  He snubbed the International Climate Talks this month in Poland, sending a minion instead.  As if that weren't bad enough, his excuse?  "Too busy legislating to remove a price from Carbon" - i.e. going backwards on the issue.
2. Contempt for the Media - The silence over the boats policy is shocking, and frankly close to undemocratic.  I don't hold out much hope for its long term success however as they will find themselves having to review their weekly statements policy when something terrible ala Christmas Island disaster in 2010 will force them out of that cadence.  Only now, 10 weeks later, has the Government granted proper interviews to the ABC (Tony Abbott fronted the ABC - on 730 report - and Scott Morrison fronted RN Breakfast, just in the last fortnight).  But he fronted 2GB with Alan Jones within days of being elected!  Furthermore, no Coalition member can speak to the media without Abbott's office clearance - demonstrating an astonishing contempt for transparency.
3. Contempt for the Parliament - I found the fact that Abbott waited two months before recalling parliament after being elected pretty disappointing, and he attempted to avoid as much scrutiny as possible before he was forced to front up to Question Time. Between Question Time and Senate Estimates, this is all we have left in terms of scrutiny and accountability as the Media have been flatly excluded from the process (with the exception of the compliant and complicit News Ltd publications). In fact to prove that point, when asked in Parliament how many boats he had "bought back", Scott Morrison stalled and demurred.  When asked by The Australian Newspaper, he was happy to oblige them with the details.
4. Contempt for the People - But having based an entire election campaign around "stopping the boats", Abbott shows utter contempt for the Australian people to only report on that once a week; and even within that to hide almost all the details under "operational matters" or "on water issue" smokescreens.  The Coalition Government fails to realise that while there are a large number of bigots whose xenophobia led them to vote for a "stop the boats" policy and don't care how it's done, the rest of us take great interest in how our Navy and Immigration Department are mis-treating the world's most vulnerable people.
5. Contempt for Process - Despite hounding Craig Thompson and Peter Slipper for expenses fraud, Tony Abbott saw no reason for his own expenses or those of his colleagues to come under any scrutiny.  The hypocrisy was in and of itself quite breathtaking.
6. Contempt for Indonesia - Tony Abbott's disdain for Indonesia and in particular its President SBY is an international embarrassment. Paraphrased as "everyone does it, get over it", his arrogant dismissal of SBY's palpable offence is amateur and an international embarrassment.  When you compare his reaction to that of Obama in the same position, the gulf in the quality of leadership is transparent.  In fact, SBY himself has dwarfed Abbott in terms of demonstrating maturity.  
7. Contempt for The States - Christopher Pyne's welch on the Better Schools/Gonski promise is reprehensible.  Even Liberal Premier Barry O'Farrell was offended by the way he had been insulted by Pyne's refusal to negotiate or consult: "this is no way for a Government to behave" he said.
8. Contempt for Expertise - Furthermore, amid this controversy, Pyne had no interest in meeting with the actual experts behind the Gonski report so he could better understand it, despite describing the report itself as "incomprehensible".  The arrogance oozes at every turn.
9. Contempt for Citizens in need - I remember this being a particular facet of the Howard Government - zero interest in defending the rights of citizens in trouble overseas.  The way Howard and Downer treated David Hicks was an appalling neglect of their responsibilities.  Now, the ailing Colin Russell is more or less abandoned by Julie Bishop as he languishes unjustly in a Russian prison.
10. Contempt for Refugees - Let's not forget Scott Morrison's edict that asylum seekers be referred to - insultingly and derogatively - as "illegals".  This really made me angry.

Before being elected, Tony Abbott said he wanted his Administration to be compared to that of Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan (which was disturbing in itself for anyone left-of-centre).  I fear that it is more likely to be compared to that of George W Bush, whose disastrous reign was also characterised by spectacular hubris and arrogance.  As such, I worry that such aloofness will bring its own demise - at our expense - and this quote seems to quite elegantly sum up this dynamic:

“Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started.” Mary Midgley, The Myths We Live by

I for one thought it was the most ridiculous and far-fetched theory when I first heard it on the radio, but in the few weeks since then, I have come to the conclusion that it might in fact be the truth.  I certainly feel a lot more satisfied with it than with either of the alternatives - the lone gunman or the complex conspiracy.  The kill shot was in fact a terrible, tragic accident and the cover up was not part of a sophisticated coup d'etat...but desperate and frantic  damage control driven by embarrassment and shame.  But it is a proposition that most suits humanity's MO - one of stupidity, incompetence and scandal.

"It's not sexy. It's not rife with intrigue," said Bonar Menninger, a Kansas City journalist and a leading proponent of the theory. "But for that reason, in my mind, it's extremely compelling — because it's the only theory that hews tightly to the available evidence."

So 50 years to the day of JFK's controversial assassination, and in fact longer since then than he actually lived 9he died aged 46), obviously we are all agreed that it is far from clean-cut.  The stench of conspiracy and cover-up is everywhere to be found.  Something is clearly amiss, and was from the very start.  But at the same time, I've often felt the ornate, over-sophisticated conspiracy involving the CIA, the Mafia and Cuban exiles put forward by Oliver Stone et al is a bit sketchy too.  Not because their arguments are not convincing - they are; as convincing as they are intriguing.  But more because it I have come to the conclusion that on balance, when it comes to people: clumsiness, incompetence, shame and deceit tend to be more at the forefront of major events than the kind of precision-organisation, diligence and, above all, discretion required to pull off such an ambitious plot - for these are not humanity's strong suits.

So if you can read about or watch "JFK: The Smoking Gun" you will get a very surprising view of the events, through the eyes of a very clinical forensic investigator - Australian Colin McLaren.  The outcome is likely to be a story that will initially seem quite ridiculous and unsatisfying to you, but as it begins to settle into your brain you realise that it is far more than plausible and I now think the most likely scenario. After all, history is all about fallibility is more the norm than clinical execution ('scuse the pun) .

So the potted theory is this: the secret service guys had all been "bar-hopping" around Dallas the night before 'till the very early hours and were feeling very delicate.  So Agent George Hickey - ordinarily a driver, lacking rifle training but who hadn't been out the night before - was given the task of manning the high-powered rifle in the Secret Service car immediately behind the President's car.  When the second shot cracked through the Dallas air he grabbed the cocked rifle and stood up looking up towards the Book Depository where the shot came from.  As he did so, the car he was in accelerated off behind the President's car - already carrying an injured President and Governor.  As the car took off, the half-standing Hickey was thrown back into his seat and as he did so he accidentally blew his President's brains apart with his rifle.

It sounds crazy, but as you review the evidence it falls into place.  The cover up was managed by the Secret Service, desperate to keep their scandalous incompetence from the public.  Ultimately, the Government was complicit in the Warren Commission, which pursued the line that Oswald got off all three shots.

But some key bits of evidence do it for me.  

1. The way the President's head reacts to the final shot is not actually consistent with the Grassy Knol theory.  the special - typically secret-service-employed - bullet explodes on impact unlike the orthodox bullets fired by Oswald.  The way the president reacts to the shot is more consistent with his being shot from behind, and by a different rifle from that of Oswald.
2. The witness statements of gunsmoke at street level is very compelling, as obviously this isn't consistent with either a shot from Oswald or the "second shooter" on the Grassy Knoll.
3. They have proved that the initially laughable "magic bullet" theory does actually stand up as the Governor's seat was actually lower and to the left of the President - meaning Oswald's second shot inflicted all those injuries.
4. Agent George Hickey never contested the theory.  

It is a bit disappointing, but the shame of it - the sheer human ineptitude and tragedy of it - is a much better explanation for how everyone has kept silent about the truth all these years.  The Mafia-CIA-Cuba nexus theory always baffled me because I just couldn't see all of the hundreds of people supposedly involved keeping their mouths shut.

Oswald could still be part of that conspiracy though, and his assassination by Jack Ruby could also be part of that.  But it is just as likely that he is part of a Secret Service conspiracy to cover up the fact that Oswald only got off two shots - the first shot went stray - and that they executed the leader of the free world, by accident...50 years ago today. 

As Tony Abbott is sworn in this morning, more will change than the residency of Kirribilli House - despite my regular proclamations during the campaign that was all that the man stood for.  Some of the change has already begun - although more than a week since the election it must be said: not very much.  But enough of a change in atmosphere had developed by last night that I realised I was already "livid" and despaired at how I might cope for the next three years - and I realised that hoping that it is *only* three years is a good start.  But as many have said, "hope" suggests you have no control over events.  This post is to say "yes we do".

As I tweeted out my despair, a fellow left-leaner tweeted back "as a great man once said: maintain your rage".  

@Mrgareth @narelleford @TonyAbbottMHR A great man once said:Maintain your rage.

— John Young (@lightonhill) September 17, 2013

So what else changes today?

• The Department of Immigration has already been ordered today to stop issuing Permanent Protection Visas and now to issue only Temporary ones, re-birthing that outrage of the Howard era
• Not only has work begun on the repeal of The Carbon Tax* but also the Clean Energy Fund has been ordered to stop work - permanently
• The least gender diverse Cabinet in 20 years is also sworn in

Who knows what else is brewing in the background as a Government focussed more on administrative and financial efficiency than social welfare or equity takes the reigns.  My ire rose up like bile most when I heard last night that the Chairman of Abbott's Business Advisory Council said that anthropological climate change is a "myth", echoing the PM-elect's own famous words: "climate change is crap".  

So with rage already at potentially unbearable levels, what to do?  It heartened me greatly to hear that far from being Kevin Rudd who "saved the furniture", ordinary Labor members were responsible for the surprisingly Parliamentary position Labor achieved 10 days ago in the face of a pundit-promised wipe-out.  Volunteer sign-up and activism was at all-time high despite the leadership malaise, as was online micro-donations, in a curious mirror of a hitherto American Democrat phenomenon.  ALP National President Jenny McAlistair reported that Labor's ground game was at its height with a quarter of a million homes door-knocked (I letter-boxed more than 1,000 homes myself).  It is this that "saved the furniture", not Kevin Rudd's chaotic campaign.

Taking a lead from Tony Abbott's own aggressive opposition, Labor can limit him to only one term as Anthony Albanese promised to do with an incessant critique of his failures and policy dysfunction.  As the first Labor leader to be in part elected by the rank-and-file he or Bill Shorten will be genuinely able to campaign on behalf of grass roots party members - and not the Unions.  This can be the basis of a Labor renewal after a wasted mandate and a legacy all-but-destroyed by petty factional disputes and personality warfare.  

So I will maintain the rage - here on this blog - and I will tend to the "fire in my belly".  It is a common analysis that The Coalition didn't *win* the election, but rather Labor lost it.  Labor didn't deserve to be in government.  But Tony Abbott - a policy-free zone - should be on notice that he is only borrowing government while Labor re-organises.  We want it back in three years' time!

As the hours tick down to the polls closing tomorrow evening, and this god-awful election farce comes to a merciful end, it's "make-your-mind-up" time.  Many will have done already, but as Kevin Rudd desperately insists, three per cent are still thinking and many of those won't decide until they're in the booth.  Thats about 350,000 people.  If you're one of them, here's maybe something to think about.

There is of course no end of issues to wrestle with, not least the question about whether or not the Government deserve another term.  Very few people can deny that the Labor party have made a right royal pig's ear out of the mandate they were given in 2007, have stuffed-up a lot of things up and their leadership shenanigans have been an embarrassing circus.

However, their stimulus spending through the GFC was inspired; and Disability Care is an historic reform.

On many of the issues the parties converged somewhat hypocritically in the last few weeks.  Labor adopted a Coalition position on Refugees they railed against in opposition; while the Coalition adopted Labor's Education funding reforms - albeit half-heartedly - despite opposing them rabidly most of the year.  The NBN - albeit important - is a fairly nuanced argument.

But on one issue there is clear blue water between the two parties, and it is very, very important.  It is the future of the very planet we live on.

Tony Abbott has made this a "referendum on the Carbon Tax" but in many ways it is actually a referendum on Climate Change itself.  As we all know, Mr Abbott believes Climate Change science is "crap".  His "Direct Action" plan is laughable - a few boy scouts planting trees is not going to save the earth.  Even if it stood a chance of doing so, the meagre funding of it is capped.  Direct Action should be called "Lip Service".  As Bernard Keane writes, 

"Direct Action won’t meet that 5 per cent target – it won’t come close, not by the normal maths used by most of us, and certainly not according to any independent analysts who have vetted the policy. Indeed, Direct Action will make a negligible impact on reducing emissions."

He has of course repeated ad nauseam that he will "scrap the Carbon Tax" - described by the International Energy Agency as "template Legislation" and which evolves into an Emission Trading Scheme next year under Labor.  In so doing he removes a price on Carbon which the consensus of experts agree is the only mechanism for effectively reducing emissions.  In addition, he has announced he will scrap the Clean Energy Fund - essentially a Government funded Venture Capitalist body designed to incubate Clean Energy innovation and entrepreneurs.  Under this scheme Australia could have become a world leader in Green Technology.  Both of these essential policies will be history within the year if The Liberals win office tomorrow.

(I'm not talking about the Greens because I'm still angry about their blocking of the ETS in 2010 and the trouble that caused.)

Anyone living in Sydney knows this has been the warmest winter since records began and the summer head of us will be a scorcher.  Those who are parents must fear for the future of their children, and their children's children.  If these policies are implemented, in 80 years' time - after the ice caps have melted and the sea levels have risen - many will look back at the Election of 2013 as the moment Australia went fatally backwards.

If you can't give Labor the House of Representatives, then at least for the sake of the planet - don't give the Liberals the Senate. 

A long forgotten chapter from history was thrust into the news agenda this week when a delegation from the New South Wales Parliament was threatened with being banned from the 2015 Gallipoli Centenary celebrations by the Turkish Government.  

Usually, the relations between the Turkish and Australian governments are surprisingly cordial for two nations once locked in deadly combat. With the exception of occasional spats over monument preservation, the two nations seem brothers-in-arms, victims of a proxy war between Britain and Germany.  Equally in fact both nations derived considerable national pride from the battle despite the horrendous slaughter.  While Australia's very character seems in many ways founded by "diggers" on those beaches and trenches on a small peninsular in the Dardanelles; modern Turkish Nationalism under Mustafa Ataturk can also be traced to that battlefield.  

But a quite prickly and uncomfortable stand-off has already begun as a number of Armenian descendants now living in Australia are seeking recognition of a very dark - and mostly forgotten - chapter of World War One history.  But it is one that I feel quite strongly about as well as State parliaments all over Australia are tabling official Genocide recognition motions.

One of the most disturbing, moving and profound hours of my life was walking around a tiny museum in the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem*. The museum itself is proof that content overshadows environment as the quite modest and rudimentary display tells a story I had never heard of until then.  But it has stayed with me as a memory just as starkly as my tour of the Yad Vashem museum commemorating the Jewish Holocaust did in that same city.

The events - the murder of 1.5 million people and deportation of many more - actually generated the word "Genocide" and is recognised as the first systematic attempt to erase an entire people.  The link with Gallipoli stems from the fact that the battle and the genocide share the same birthday - April 25th, 1915.  In fact, Australian POWs were among the only witnesses - a fact the Turkish Governments denies.

Many historians believe that Hitler pointed to the Armenian genocide as the model for the Jewish Holocaust - not only for its systematic nature, but also for the fact that, some 25 years later, no one could remember those events.  This gave the Nazis confidence they'd get away with their gruesome plan.  "Who speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?" asked Hitler himself in 1939.

And thats the point.  People often wonder why remembrance is so important.  Why do we cling to the horrors of war from long ago when all those involved are dead.  Why - as we approach the 100 years since the 1914-18 war - must we spend so much emotional energy commemorating these depressing events?  Why - basically - is history so important?

If the Turks had not been so successful erasing their shocking crime from the consciousness of Europe after the First World War, perhaps the Holocaust might not have happened!  As an Armenian neighbour - Syria - even today tortures its own people in barbaric ways, this lesson seems poignantly important. 

So I applaud these petitions to Turkey and I hope they succeed in raising awareness of an awful innovation in cruelty.  

--------------------------------------

First, from Labor, a relatively pithy cardboard flier - about the size of a airline boarding pass - briefing me on the progress and benefits of the Disability Care Scheme.  The piece is actually very understated.  Four bullet-points on the back outlining how the scheme benefits families for whom the scheme is relevant.  My local member is the Health Minister Tanya Plibersek and so this is relevant because as well as voting for my local seat of Sydney the decision has consequences for the Health portfolio.  The flier tells me of the timeline to national roll-out - July 2019 - and that pilot sites are operational now.  While obviously there's a partisan point being made, the flier is actually fairly to-the-point and fact-based.

Now it does need to be said that like most people I have a "no junk mail" sticker above my letterbox.  While of course this request is broadly ignored, it does lead me to tend to foilter my mail in terms of those who have abused this and those that have not.

So, on the topic of abuse, lets turn to the Liberal Party collateral...

At the point of opening it, I didn't even know it was a Liberal Party mailer - a white envelope with "IMPORTANT ELECTORAL INFORMATION" emblazoned across it.  With no logo or anything else, I assumed it was from the Australian Electoral Commission.  Wrong.  It was a letter from Tony Abbott.  His pitch to me is - paraphrased - along these lines:

1. A stronger economy. No detail on how, I've to take his word for it.  There is the promise of 2 million jobs but as yet, in nothing they've said, I cannot find any actual policy action that will create these jobs.  One answer I've heard him say is that the number is "based on the record of the Howard Government".

2. Repeal the Carbon Tax. I'm still to actually feel the impact of this terrible scourge of our fiscal framework, and know that by July next year - the same timescale the Coalition plan to finish it - the ALP will commute it to a floating emission scheme.  But, I must recognise, this is actually a concrete policy.

3. "Keep income tax cuts, pension and benefit increases".  So this represents maintaining this government's compensation framework for a tax they plan to repeal.  This is nonsensical and to me signifies a lack of political will to maintain the compensation for a tax that won't exist merely because they don't want to invite negative perception.

4. Build more roads.  OK, this is a policy too.  Way to go.

5. Yes, you guessed it - "stop the boats".  I don't actually want them to do this, but lets not go there now.

But all that aside, the real outrage of the mailer is the fact that it actually invites the recipient to fill in what appears to be a postal vote application form.  But is it the AEC's logo on the form?  No, the Liberal Party's.  Yes thats right, after inputting your details in their database, they will submit your details for the postal vote for you - because you haven't got the intelligence to do that for yourself?

Worse still is the illustrated instructions contained on the form to help you understand what to do:

1. Read the application form and fill in the details

2. Sign and date the application form

3. Put the form in the envelope

4. Yes, you guessed it...post it!

Really? 

Being patronised and treated like an idiot doesn't win my heart, mind or vote Mr Abbott!  This is all very reminiscent of the Howard years, which I had partly forgotten.   It reminded me that the Liberal Party is essentially an elitist organisation.  

Sketchy doesn't begin to describe the awfully long bows the Coalition draws in its policies.  There really is too much of "we will improve productivity by repealing the Carbon Tax."  "The Economy will improve because we will repeal the mining tax".  It has the feel of someone doing their Economics homework at the last minute, with the strongest argument being "just because".  

This gross insult to my intelligence that this consistent with the other event this week that sent my blood to boiling point.  When asked what the Coalition's policies would cost the bottom line, Shadow Treasurer invited the electorate to figure out themselves, and "get out a calculator"!!!!  (This blog post on this is well worth the read.)  

So what conclusion do I draw.  One party has policies that go the very heart of what government is about - improving the lot of those less fortunate.  The other?  I get a sense of entitlement.  "Trust us, we've done it before.  Don't trouble yourself with the complicated details, you're not clever enough to understand them."  I don't want a government that 

As the dust settles on this week's Leadership insanity, people are starting to think about what is wrong with the system we have in this country, or in fact Democracy itself.  While we tut and sigh about the various bad behaviour tied up in all of this, and we ridicule the people we see exposed and undermined in the glare of the 24/7 media spotlight, we have to ask ourselves - "Who's fault is this?"

Three years' ago the nation applauded the savage removal of a man whom; three years before that Australians cheered to the electoral finish line as if a new messiah.  We cheered him towards the defeat of a man who's legacy is now seemingly revered as a Golden Era of Good Government.

Three years' ago Australians congratulated themselves on the election of the first woman to the highest office in the land, and delighted in the promise of a new female style of leadership. Three days ago some people sneered and air-punched when that same woman was knifed in the back - because she was a woman.  There's been all manor of disgust at the Machiavellian antics, and yet it is all we want to talk about.  We complain that the media only write about and ask questions about Leadership challenges but the journalists write about that stuff because they see the newspaper sales figures and web site traffic spikes every time they do.

Kevin Rudd always had a platform for an insurgence because his poll ratings were so high with marginal voters, and yet three years ago his colleagues assassinated him because his miserable polling so clearly showed he was a popularity liability.  Conversely the liability that has just been sacked came to power on a wave of consistently high polling.

Six years ago we sent a party into power demanding that they do something about climate change, shut the detention centres, fix the education and health system and ensure a fairer distribution of the resources boom bounty.  Now, six years later a government that has delivered a price on carbon, taxed the miners (albeit ineptly), dismantled offshore processing (before we asked them to put it back again), introduced billions of dollars of new funding for schools and arranged national insurance for those with disabilities - is being decried for having done those very things.  We demanded the best internet pipes in the world but we don't want to pay for them.  We decry the poor state of political debate and yet we refuse to listen to a woman taking time to explain complex education policy and instead listen to a man who monotonously repeats things like "great big tax" and "stop the boats".

This country clearly has the healthiest economy in the OECD (albeit off a very low base) yet all we do is complain about the economy.

Of course I know it is more complicated than this, and these things aren't all the same people.  But many are the same people.  ("We" after all, "are us".)  The polls and the media appetite is what drives all of this, and people who measure that stuff look at the average.  

We tore down a woman who said she wouldn't introduce a tax on carbon and then had to as a compromise to make a hung parliament - elected by the average of the people - work.  We tore her down for being inconsistent.  For not staying true to her principles and beliefs.  For saying one thing and doing another.  

They do say you get the government you deserve - and this is what we have because they are only doing what we tell them to.

But I do feel their service should be celebrated and rewarded more than it has.  Books should be written about their extraordinary experiment in pragmatic democracy and a new twist on a democratic model that has otherwise - but for them - seen its most shameful hour in the last three years.  While everyone talked about a new model for politics in September 2010 - these two gentlemen meant it.  And they delivered on it.  Amid all the miserable mud slinging that has characterised this parliament, they have always emerged as a quiet, subtle, diligent civilising element; ever restoring my faith in the process while others - most particularly the Opposition - have aggressively eroded it.

As human beings too, it has always been interesting to study.  It has been a fascinating, isolated Senior-Junior partnership. A micro-party in fact.  They have managed, I think, to rise above the murky melee but their commentary on it was always informative, intelligent and enlightening.  They have been extremely transparent in their workings - if only this was more common!  They have been very public about their deliberations on policy issues, and been up front about their decisions.  This was the case from the outset, the Seventeen minute speech perhaps an extreme version! 

That speech notwithstanding, the Oakeshott-Windsor duo has been a marvellous chapter in the Democratic story - globally as well as locally, and one that Classical Political Philosophers in the tradition of Plato and Socrates would delight in I feel.  They were individuals representing their electorate in the truest sense.  Typically, the only time an MP thinks of his or her constituents seems to be when that electorate becomes marginal (a brutal reality suddenly real and present for upwards of 30 Labor MPs).

Most backbenchers chart their course through a parliament based on the discipline of the party whip or Machiavellian tactics to suit their personal career objectives.  These two essentially Centrist, pragmatic policy wonks instead navigated their way through the 43rd parliament based on an apparently strong moral compass and an old fashioned sense of public service.  To some extent of course they operated based on what was good for their constituency - in the mould of a US Senator - but generally they seem to have kept their eye on the policy win for the general public.   

This zeal wouldn't survive in a majority House or Senate, it would be drowned out by partisan political machinations where the policy is only a football in a wider, cynical battle for power.  As the vultures once again gather around their leader, at once professing loyalty while sharpening daggers, this bizarre Shakespearean drama reaches its denouement. It occurs to me that while Mark Anthony spoke of Brutus and Cassius ironically as "Honourable Men"; were Oakeshott and Windsor Roman Senators in the day he could have held them up by way of contrast.  

Their kind won't be seen again - Parliament and Australia will be  poorer for their departure.  Kudos gentlemen, Valedico!

As you deliberate the Lions Test Team for the first Test against The Wallabies, can I be presumptuous enough to offer my two cents?

(I'm sure you won't read this, but if you do can I start by saying how much of a fan of your's I am?  The fact that you won a convincing Six Nations Grand Slam with Wales in your first year is amazing.  I know Wales had already won one recently in 2005, but in 2008 it was *convincing*.  Then you won another in 2012 and your management team won a Championship in 2013.  It has all made me very happy..thanks!)

In terms of my impudent advice for picking the test side, let's start with what we both know: Halfpenny as Full Back - that's a given (I was in the ground for the Waratahs game).  Also I think  Mike Philips for Scrum Half and Jonny Sexton for Fly Half are equally easy decisions.  The Wings are tough but I think whatever you chose between North, Cuthbert and Maitland I'd agree with you.  Cuthbert has been fortunate to score many tries against weak opposition on this tour, but probably the real talent is with North and Maitland.

So the Wings, Half Backs and Full back are done.  The Centres are tough, and depending on the injury situation at the moment it looks like Jonathan Davies and Brian O'Driscoll - unless you feel like the biggest gamble which is Cuthbert on the wing with Maitland and sticking North in the Centre with Davies?  You have dabbled with North in Centre, let's face it.  This could be genius or it could completely blow up in your face.  I guess this is why you're paid the big bucks?

With so many Welsh players available, and my obvious bias aside, I have to say the back line has to be all Welsh: Warburton, Tipuric and Faletau.  But I don't believe Sam should captain. Paul O'Connel, a given for Second Row with Alun Wyn Jones, should be Captain.  He not only has more experience, he has more presence.  Then for the Front Row I really don't know, but consensus seems to be that Hibbard would make a good Hooker and Adam Jones is a must. So there's another front row job I can't help you with.

But now I see your political problem.  You're a Welsh Coach, with an embarrassment of Welsh riches that you know well, and you have to pick a side representative of the British Isles.  Good luck with that, but what I've proposed is a good side I think.  Whatever you do will be sound though.

But can I just say, too many recent British and Irish Lions Tours have been ruined by squad politics and Manager favouritism - it is so refreshing to see a Tour that isn't - and the credit for that is your's.  So well done, good luck and here's to a first Series win for the Lions since 1997.

On the evening of the 6th June I naturally found myself watching "The Longest Day".  In fact I'm surprised only one channel was showing it.  Not even "Saving Private Ryan" but there's something about TLD that tells this amazing story so completely.

Anyway, I couldn't help thinking while watching it that, 69 years later, Would they do it today?  

Three million men sailing across a storm-torn English Channel and taking on the most insurmountable military force known to man - and keeping it a secret until they showed up on the French coast that chilly morning.  Can you imagine today's global leadership having that kind of back-bone to mount that kind of operation?  It makes the invasion of Iraq look like a cadet exercise.   As Rod Steiger says in it, "the biggest Armada the world's ever known." 

As we watch the Syrian Civil War turn into the most ghastly human rights catastrophe since the holocaust and the UN fail to do anything but posture, I struggle to imagine the global community galvanise into action in the way the Allies did in June 1944. 

I've walked most of the beaches along that front: Juno and Omaha and Sword.  The scale is quite something else when you get a sense of the size of the front they opened up.  I've also been to the Pegasus Bridge and seen how far in land that was - how far behind enemy lines - and how steep the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc.

(I've also been watching "Band of Brothers" lately and understood again what a huge struggle began on June 7th 1944 and what a long road to Berlin it was.)

Would today's leadership sue for peace?  Would they procrastinate for years until nothing could be done.  Would the Nazi reality just become something they could have "appeased" and placated?  

I hope not, but when you look at the inactivity taking place over Syria today - and equally over climate change for that matter - it is hard to have the kind of confidence in the modern world leadership that they would find steel in the way Roosevelt and Churchill did in 1944.

Well, whatever, all I can say is "John has a long moustache".

The ANZAC spirit is a powerful phenomenon that I've been strongly impacted by ever since I arrived in Australia, ever since my first (and so far only) attendance at the Sydney Dawn Service. While the dead from the two World Wars obviously tore apart so many communities and families in Britain, there is something strange and mystical about those people who took part from these distant and removed shores. This year, as I find myself researching the family tree, I have discovered I have personal connections to that legend.

I've experienced a new and uncomfortable sensation this week, beng ashamed of my home country.  Living abroad and watching some of the dancing-on-grave that's been taking place back in the UK has provoked many emotions but I think now that the primary one is shame.  That thousands of people would conspire to increase the misery of someone's grief by the promotion of a song meanly insulting their deceased loved one seems deeply shameful and ungracious I think.  The Ding Dong campaign for me is a dark hour in British protest history.

That is not to say that I stand with those who seek to white-wash Baroness Thatcher's memory.  Quite the opposite.  I've learnt a lot in the last week about my own childhood and the times in which I spent my formative years.  I think many intelligent people on the left have engaged in quite appropriately critical reflection on her legacy - such as Glenda Jackson, Polly Toynbee and the like - while many Tories have attempted to shut that kind of debate down (this article by Glenn Greenwald is very interesting for instance: Margaret Thatcher and misapplied death etiquette).  

Alongside the necessity of considering her legacy for the historical record, and dwelling on the direction Britain took, and has taken, since she came to power in 1979; I can see that it is also essentially relevant to the political debate of today in the UK.  As a new generation of Tories deliver a new tranche of fairly soulless, socially-callous cuts to public services and the infrastructure of the Welfare State, Thatcherism needs re-examining.  As a tax on spare rooms for benefit receivers looms, the debacle of the Poll Tax needs recollection.

However, beyond all of this very sensible and intellectually weighty debate, from where I am sitting 11,000 miles away, conspiring to ensure "Ding Dong the Witch is dead" is number 1 for a woman's funeral is wicked and gut-wrenchingly distasteful. Australian debate gets pretty personal and acidic at times but they would never actively celebrate a death and many here seemed quite disgusted by the spectacle. She has a family afteral and while Mark Thatcher is not someone who's sensitivities I would usually seek to protect, Carol Thatcher does not deserve this kind of persecution by her fellow Brits at a time of grief.  Most of those celebrating weren't even alive in the 80s.  Most of them didn't indulge this kind of vitriol for Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden of Gaddafi - all of whom had so many heinous crimes to answer for.

But even for those that wish her ill, you could say she had paid her debt.  As Germaine Greer pointed out (at the end of this clip), she enjoyed no plush non-exec jobs on boards and was bound for the humiliating speaker circuit until her health prevented her even from that. Unlike the comfortable pasture years most elder statespeople serve after their time in power, she was for the last 15 years reduced to a mere miserable pensioner, a decade of it widowed, with ever creeping dementia. Anyone wishing her ill has already had their wish satiated I feel. Now is the time to reflect on her legacy and it's lessons; celebrate her strengths, consider her weaknesses and regret her mistakes but most of all lament the passing of the extraordinary in an era of really quite ordinary leadership.

It is a testament to the woman's relevance that news of her death was announced during a TV debate about Feminism.  In fact, comparison between her and Julia Gillard had been made only 5 minutes before Tony Jones broke with tradition and announced breaking news during his #qanda show.  She always had that ability to frame a debate.

I've let the news set in a little now and have reflected on what it means.  I am one of Thatcher's Children, I grew up in Thatcher's Britain and her career defined so much of my life I felt it important to jot a few words down.  Initially I thought it might bring homesickness, but pretty soon I realised that its the divisive class war that she created that contributed to my decision to leave the country.

Apparently it was her and Keith Joseph's intention to drag British politics so far to the right that even the left would have to repsond to their agenda, and in Tony Blair we see the evidence of that - he was probably the proof of her success in achieving that.   I heard Ed Miliband say that he, David Cameron and Nick Clegg were all products of the Thatcher years, and that too demonstrates how her legacy still defines British politics.  It wasn't called Thatcher's Britain for no reason - she owned those little islands for 11 years, and the people within them, and re-shaped them in her image.  Quite an achievement that demonstrates leadership I've not seen the like of since.

Unlike many of the vox pox and call-back radio phoners I've heard since she died, I've pretty mixed views on Thatch.  I grew up in a household sympathetic to the Thatcher message.  In fact my father was elected as a Tory Borough Councillor on her coat tails in 1979.  I lived in the Britain that benefited from her reforms and most of the people around me either quietly or vocally approved of what she did.  Attending private school in the south of England it was easy as a boy to understand the 80s in terms of much needed economic reform, tough love and no gain without pain.  I was too young - I was 9 when she was elected - to comprehend the economic realities of the early 80s and by the time I became aware of the economic fortunes the economy was buoyant.  The people who stood to gain from privatisation and market liberalism were the fathers of my friends in the most part.  It all seemed a good thing.  I didn't have much exposure to the families dependent on the coal industry, or the car industry.  I didn't know any single mothers.  I didn't know any Argentinians.

So when I arrived at University just in time for her demise in November 1990, I was confronted with quite a different perspective on The Thatcher years.  As my own politics drifted rapidly to the left - for many reasons - I got a new view.  Now I see someone who while obviously strong and courageous and emboldened by conviction; I feel should have done more to win the debate, bring the country with her and unite instead of divide.  I certainly feel now as a self-confessed pseudo-socialist that she was a class warrior who only seemed to govern for those that looked after themselves.  Government is about more than liberating the able, its about enabling the disadvantaged and she failed to do this.  Moreover, she  trod on the less fortunate on her way to what she wanted and she brushed aside those that were inconvenient to her life view.  In short, she was a tyrant.

However, lacking in almost any goodwill, her message was often received so negatively when she had a point.  Norman Tebbit's "get on your bike" comment for instance - that inspired so much anger and seemed to embody her political demeanour - is not so heartless.  I've been doing some family tree research and found that my great grand father left Wales when the Coal mines closed in the thirties and my grandfather left Lancashire when the Cotton Mills closed in the 50s.  They both moved to the south to look for work and made a better life for themselves.  But not everyone had her resourcefulness and she needed to be compassionate and inclusive.  Moreover she had a duty to govern for them also.

So on balance I must like everyone recognise her strength and courage of conviction and lament its rarity in today's politics.  Living in a country today ruled by a divisive female PM it occurs to me that it is difficult to be a strong female leader and be popular at the same time.  But when I heard someone on the radio say in reaction to her death, "she destroyed my home town and I'm glad she's dead" I must conclude that a great leader has failed when they've inspired such animosity and conflict.

But I think this recent TV dramatisation (far more than the Streep movie) of her struggle to battle the Boys' Club glass ceiling of the Conservative Party will be the aspect of her that I might try and dwell on - something everyone can agree on, that by her example achieved so much for gender equality and personal aspiration.  She showed that if you put your mind to something, you can achieve anything and that you shouldn't let others stand in your way.   

Seemingly accidentally I have become one of those genealogy nerds.  In no way deliberately, I started plotting a now 74-person family tree on Ancestry.com and the curious history student in me has taken over.  In no time at all I have documented all the immediately known relatives on my mother's side of the family and am now fascinated by the mystery of a disappearing relative: Samuel Langford.

Somewhat at a loss, I am hoping by throwing my questions onto the web, answers might follow in the comments box below.

The mystery began with a newspaper clipping my mother sent me about a Dan Foster who "with his handlebar moustache, was a real character," managed the Picture Palace Cinema on Radcliffe Road in Bolton until his death in 1937.  This led me on to his mother, Violet Ann Foster (nee Rowland) who I found in the 1901 Census living with Daniel, his wife and four children, until her death in 1908.  

What is interesting about Violet is her first husband.  In 1859 she married a Samuel Langford from Cheshire.  Samuel seems to have grown up in service, listed in the 1851 Census as working as a "Plough Lad" in domestic service in Thornton Le Moors in Cheshire as a 16 year old.  In the 1861 Census (above) he is living with his new wife, 22 year old Violet Ann.  Two years after their marriage, they do not have children.

Three years later in 1864 Violet has a son, also named Samuel Langford.  That same year, Violet Ann Rowland marries a chap called John Foster whose profession seems quite indiscernible from the couple of Census records I saw but I think it had something to do with Iron.

That same year Samuel Langford disappears   No death certificate and no further Census appearances.  His son, Samuel Langford, becomes variously Samuel Foster and later Samuel Langford Foster.  John and Violet have a further three children including my Great, Great Grandfather Daniel Butler "handlebar moustache" Foster.

Curiously, by the 1911 Census, the Foster family crop up in Little Bolton and living among them - three years after Violet Ann's death - is a 19-year old Samuel Langford Foster.  Of the six children born to electrical engineer Daniel Butler Foster and his wife Mary Ann - including my Great Grand Mother Violet - only Samuel has a middle name.  

What happened to Samuel Langford in 1864 when his son was born and his wife married another man?  Why did he and his 22 year old wife not have children until some five years after their marriage?  Why is his name preserved in two subsequent generations of Fosters?  Why is there no record of this man subsequent to the 1851 Census?  

(Until Posthaven get the comments function up and running, if you've any answers please email me at mrgareth2005 at gmail dot com or tweet me at @mrgareth)

It's been a long road back. In 1979 in Cardiff, following a 1978 Grand Slam, Wales retained the then Five Nations Championship with a 27-3 win over arch rivals England.  The following year, England won in Twickenham by a point on the way to a Grand Slam and the slow and horrible decline of Welsh Rugby began.  

As a friend said: "he still can't sing for toffee!"  It's true. Ian Brown never could sing and without the wonders achieved by the record studio, the live experience can be somewhat grating, were it not for the fact that he sings some of the most iconic tunes from the soundtrack of my life.  The fact that he is one of the more legendary frontmen of British Rock is all the more surprising given his tuneless vocals, and a tad inspiring too.  (We shouldn't let small things like lack of talent get in the way of our quest for greatness!)  With all the psychodelic guitar riffs, mesmeric drum beats and anthemic refrains - Ian Brown's true greatness stood out in the moment he simpy spoke the name of his band, in his accent laced with thick Manc angst: "The Stone Roses."  It is perhaps this moment I'll remember the most.

A highlight of any tour around India is always going to be the perrenial must-do: The Kerala Backwaters.  Very shortly after we started discussing our intention to travel to India, right out of the traps came "you must do a houseboat on the Kerala Backwaters".  The guide books scream it out as an essential part of any trip here and having now returned from 48 hours there, I concur entirely. It is a must-do.  We are very lucky to have done it.  These people are even luckier to live there.

A complex waterway broadly akin to the Norfolk Broads or the Hawkesbury River system - two areas I know very well; the Kerala canal and rivers network in and around Allepey, just south of the Keralan capital, Kochi, is a quite visually stunning experience.  I don't think I can recall more beautiful and captivating scenery. I looked forward to a few days of reading and relaxing, but in fact spent the entire time taking pictures!  I lack the skills to adequately describe this beautiful place with words, so here is a slide show of some of those pictures.  (The new camera with which I took these - after losing my previous one in Goa - I bought only days before boarding this boat is perhaps the best timed purchase of my life!)

For those looking to be more intimate with this delightful landscape but cannot make the trip quick enough, it is best and most famously brought to life by Arundhati Roi in her delightful 1997 Booker Prize Winning Novel: The God of Small Things.

"India is where all human realities - past and present - exist at once."

Historian Michael Wood 

As I've already said, it's 15 years' to the month since I was traveling in India for the first and only other time. In that time obviously India has changed a lot. A great deal in fact (and so have I of course!)  But in so many ways India has not changed at all.   In fact at the most essential level India hasn't changed in the last 100, 500 or even a thousand years. 

Since I was here there is now a very efficient, nation-wide mobile phone network, better (in my experience) than Australia's or America's.  There is far more foreign investment thanks to Prime Minister's Singh's economic reforms of the Naughties; and the country has grown substantially to become a global economic superpower as a result.  But just as since independence the country has adopted TV and developed a huge film industry; and since the arrival of the British built out an envy-of-the-world rail network; the essentials remain just the same.  In the time that the moguls have come and gone, and as far back as Alexander the Great, the core of Indian life remains the same: family, community and puja.  Despite Call Centres, Bollywood and Bangalore's Software houses - India remains a fundamentally agrarian society.  Ancient knowledge from the ancient texts of Ayerveda to the Yoga Sutra still define how Indians live, the core answers to the meaning of life were resolved for Indians many thousands of years ago.  All the rest is mere detail and decoration.

So I haven't really found any significant change in the country at all.  Everyone is still trying to get you to visit their cousin's Emporium.  The mysterious head wobble remains for me a very inconclusive answer to a question.  Any five yard stretch of street can at once present both the most wonderful and the most foul smells you've ever experienced and you continue to run the risk of 24 hours in the bathroom with each meal you dare to enjoy.

But the traveling experience has been revolutionized in a very short space of time by the huge technological developments of the last 15 years and it's only when you come and do something again like this that you get a feel for how much life has changed.  In many cases the balance of power has significantly shifted for the traveler thanks to technology.  For instance, where before I was totally in the hands of a Rikshaw driver's sense of direction before; now, using the magic Blue Dot on Google maps, I can tell when he's going off course via his cousin's Silk Emporium!  Equally, feedback on a  hostel - good or bad- can be delivered on the WiFi network in the lobby that very moment using Tripadvisor and shared with the global traveler community.  This is so important because on my last trip I found that a hostel would rest on the laurels of a good Lonely Planet write up for years, knowing that the traffic would keep walking in the door no matter how low their standards dropped.  Now they must keep their game high perpetually.

(Equally as I wrote on my business blog, the advent of tools like Tripadvisor has changed the mechanics of Trust for the Indian Tourist service provider in ways that are quite fundamental.)

In good ways and bad ways, today's ability to keep in touch with friends and family while traveling is cosmic.  You can be in the Rajasthani Desert or the Keralan Backwater canals and post blogs, pictures and status updates to the folks back home using Facebook or Twitter instead of postcards and round-robin emails to lists of addresses from your address book.  Skype has destroyed the STD long-distance phone call business and free hotel WiFi has challenged the Internet cafe business that was so very nascent when I was here before.  Text messages (SMS) make a rendezvous with a fellow traveler an instant and cheap reality where Post Restante and "leave a message on my home voicemail" were long-winded and fraught with failure.

 The iRevolution has changed the quiet times of course, of which there's much in hotel and hostel rooms, on trains, in airports and at railway stations.  Fifteen years ago, I carried 15 of my choicest  albums in a clunky carry-case with my Walkman.  Now I have every album I've ever liked on something a quarter its size.  You can watch your favorite TV shows and movies in HD quality on a tablet screen that really doesn't weigh anything at all, and instead of a bag cluttered with books,  you can take an entire library of novels with you - and even the Lonely Planet Guide book itself - on tiny devices that take up less space than your shorts.  (Not to mention an array of board games for those long journeys - Backgammon, Risk, Monopoly anyone?)  As for the ability you have to record every second of your adventure in high clarity and digital photo or video footage and share with the world the next day - posterity is so much richer for it!

But all of this development is, while seemingly important in western life (and certainly a chalk-and-cheese difference in terms of comparing the two journeys then and now) mere detail on the surface.  A veneer even.  For what remains amazing about India is the very fact that none of this matters.  Indians don't care about it.  Sure, they all have mobile phones now - but their way of life remains bound around simplicity, spirituality and family just as it was when the Bhudda gained enlightenment.  What India teaches you about yourself, about your body and mind, how to adapt to change, perspective and different ways of understanding the very meaning of life is just the same as it was 15 years ago and I'd wager was just the same for the Romans who came here thousands of years before.  

Technology may have helped the way we process all of that, but that is all.  "The more it changes, the more it is the same thing."

While images, videos and words can bring one's adventure to life for others, one thing I wish I could capture is smell. India is well known for its assault on all senses - for good and bad - and while it's a blessing that readers of this blog are protected from some of the more putrid smells of the sub-continent; it would be awesome if you could - for instance - digitally bottle the aroma of what is questionably called "Jewtown".

So with the ability to convey smells digitally still not invented, please grind together a rich cocktail of ginger, pepper, cumin, nutmeg, tumeric and cardomom - with maybe a hint of perume - and read this post with that aroma wafting around your nose to mimic the air.

The terrific pungent cocktail of spices and perfumes that pervade the very atmosphere of this old section of Kochi in Kerala is an ancient one. The  spice trade that continues today is a global one that dates back to the days of the Phoenicians. Since then the Romans, the Chinese, Arabs, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British have all done a roaring trade in this vibrant harbour.

Those last three have left a more lasting mark.  (Although the iconic Chinese Fishing Nets still dominate the harbour skyline.)  The area known as "Fort Kochi" remains startlingly reminiscent of the days when those three great empires in turn monopolized trade around the world, and a walk down its narrow lane ways is quite evocative of bygone eras of the Spice Trade that defined many hundreds of years of European colonisation in India and across south Asia.

But an even older - and with the perennial spicey air, even more evocative - is the area officially known today as Mattancherry.  But historically is known as " Jewtown".

I first became aware of the Jewish community in Kerala perusing the exhibits of the Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv. There, with transparent nation- building agenda,  the Israeli government set out to collect and curate the collective experiences of all those Jewish communities that set out from The Levant when the Romans exiled them after the failed rebellion, and subsequent sacking of Jerusalem, in AD 70.   The Keralan Jewish community landed in 72 AD in fact.  Their descendants had been trading with India since the days of King Solomon around 900 years BC.

Well known for their aptitude in trade and finance, Jewish communities flourished here from that early time lubricating this lucrative business with loans, connections and general know-how.

Typically ghetto-ised, this is mercifully one of the few Jewish communities of the diaspora  to mostly escape the kind of persecution their brothers and sisters routinely suffered across Europe and North Africa. This is exemplary testament, I think, to the characteristically cosmopolitan, hospitable and tolerant traditions of their Indian  hosts.

The area remains a hub of furious spice, tea and perfume business; and with those products still transported in sacks and bottles not too dissimilar from those they have always been moved about in, and with the 16th century shops and warehouses still standing, it's not too hard to let your imagination drift  back to the romantic days of the spice trade here, or in the Mallacas themselves for that matter.

Jewtown on the still-standing Jewish Synagogue (above), first built in 1568 but represents other didications from as far back as the 4th and 14th centuries. The international nature of the Quarter is epitomised by features in the Synagogue including Belgian chandeliers, Chinese floor tiles and a rug from Haile Selassie, the last Ethiopian Emperor.  The place makes the perect climax to a visit to Jewtown because it seems wonderfully trapped in time.

For the real experience I strongly urge a visit to Kerala for about a hundred other reasons - but this is a good one!  (The fact that the first Indian Biennale is being held in many of the oldest buildings in this area until March is another.)

"It was the worst of times, it was the best of times," in that order.  Our Goan holiday began badly.  A misguided attempt to re-write history led me to book us into a hotel in Anjuna, a beach town in the former Portugese colony where I had stayed 15 years before and not enjoyed then.  The fact that it had most certainly only got worse in the ensuring time did not inform my hope that I could have a better time on this trip.  Anjuna was heading in a bad direction then, and now it seemed to have arrived there.  

(Palolem Beach - around Breakfast time)

As we set off on our two hour road trip to Udai Bilas hotel our driver was horrified that we were spending four nights in a dead end rural town with nothing going on. "Too much, you will be very bored". We started to worry we had made a mistake. We had just met a very dapper, cravate-wearing hotelier who claimed he owned the property - just 50km outside Udaipur - now world famous for being the setting of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which we knew in fact was just outside Udaipur. We were offered a stay there should we chose to return. No doubt many men in Udaipur will make this claim but he seemed kosher.

But just five minutes inside the grounds of Udai Bilas and we unreservedly resolved to honour every minute of our four-night booking.

The Palace is a 19th century downsize from a far older and sprawling 12th century Juna Mahal Palace (well worth a visit) in the nearby town - the amusingly named "Dungarpur" - which had remained consistently in the same family of Maharajas for 800 years.  (We met both the unofficial incumbent and the future heirs). They live in one wing of what was converted into a truly unique hotel experience in the 1930s to help with maintenance costs.  Having roamed Rajashtan enjoying its countless Palaces and Forts, to finish up the roadtrip actually living in a Palace was a special treat and a perfect venue for a what in India would always be a very strange Christmas.

Just like the Palaces all across the Desert State, Udai Bilas is a museum to the eccenticities of power courtesy of the last officially ruling Maharaja - Laxman Singh.  There's a series of photos telling a tale of a strong love for Cricket in the family, and no end of photos of one glamourous trip after another as well as political and regal pomp and circumstance.  Most disturbing, and exceedingly un-PC - though is the drawing room in which we were invited to have sundowners on the first evening.

We counted about 200 heads on the wall - of shot game that is.  Wilderbeast, Rhinos, Boar,  Gazelles etc.  All with "shot" dates ranging from the late 1950s to the early 1980s.  A prolific - if not decidedly distasteful - shooting career.  The room contained even more distrubing detail.  Here and there, the foot of an Elephant or the hoofs of Gazelle had been converted into the legs for small foot stools.  With the guests a motley crew of eclectic western tourists from Australia and England, any moment now we expected Hercule Poirot to enter and explain a perplexing murder.

The proportion of staff to guest was almost one-to-one it seemed which further emphasised the sense of Palacial living.  The Hotel manager, one H. V. Singh, had the air of Mr Benn about him.  Whenever a question popped into your head, "as if by magic" the Hotel manager would appear and answer it.  He seemed to have the telepathic qualities of M*A*S*H's Radar.  The staff went to extraorinary trouble to accommodate our Christmas, with Christmas Lunch served on the lawn by the lake - ironically across from the Shiva Temple - and while dubious in places certainly served to fill a festive hole.

Lazing by the quite beautiful Lakeside pool, walks in the local town (filled with some of the most welcoming and friendly people I've ever had the privilege of meeting) and extravagant dinners at the al fresco marble/jacuzi dining table characterised the rest of the stay, building towards a climax of Christmas Day evening drinks in the Maharajah's personal Automobile museum which included a not inconsiderable collection of a Buick, several BMWs, a E-Type and all manor of other paraphenalia and memorabilia.  

For fans of the Marigold, there are enough Indian-isms to make the experience authentic: power-cuts, plumbing idiosynchracies, spelling mistakes in the menu, food that demands bravery - that sort of thing.  But for a very reasonable spend, anyone travelling in the area and looking for that unique, regal and highly memorable break - Udai Bilas is for you!