Vicissitudes
We all know someone with a story to tell about the vicissitudes of life: sudden upheavals in personal circumstances, reversals of fortune, ill twists of fate. My next-door neighbor, for instance, was married to a Czech lawyer fluent in numerous languages, alas none of them English. He arrived with his wife in Australia, mid-1968. He was 43 years old at the time. It was a struggle, but eventually he found work in this country, as a cleaner at a mental hospital. His weekly rent then was 90 dollars, more than double his wage. Maybe that’s what finally killed him: poverty.
My own mother-in-law, formerly a midwife, comes from an educated, middle-class Iranian family forced into exile by the 1979 fundamentalist uprising. Her husband is Anglo-Indian, formerly a police official hailing from the upper crust of the British Raj. They too faced difficulty in finding employment when they relocated, first to the UK, finally Australia. For decades they kept on downsizing, belt-tightening, until at last they found shelter in a crowded cul-de-sac in a miserable Queensland suburb called Burpengary.
Just recently, my mother-in-law hawked her solid-gold Iranian coins, the last vestiges of her homeland, in order to help her daughter, my wife, during this insufferable bout of financial hardship. We expect our new landlord should be satisfied, but probably won’t be until he has his pound of flesh thrown into the bargain.
The encouraging thing about these otherwise sad life stories, is that change is possible: sometimes, even, violent change: radical social upheaval that comes when it is least expected. Vast fortunes can be reversed, sometimes in a matter of days. And we know from history that no empire endures forever.
This is the flimsy basis of my revolutionary hope for Australia. Imagine a truly egalitarian society without either landlords or tenants: that’s my great Australian dream. Under pain of exile (or worse), the landlords, estate agents, bankers and politicians would be divested of their wealth and then given a simple choice: Take It or Leave It.
Cop it sweet, when that time comes, you landlords, politicians, bankers, et al. Chalk it up to the vicissitudes of life. From this, nobody is immune.
My own mother-in-law, formerly a midwife, comes from an educated, middle-class Iranian family forced into exile by the 1979 fundamentalist uprising. Her husband is Anglo-Indian, formerly a police official hailing from the upper crust of the British Raj. They too faced difficulty in finding employment when they relocated, first to the UK, finally Australia. For decades they kept on downsizing, belt-tightening, until at last they found shelter in a crowded cul-de-sac in a miserable Queensland suburb called Burpengary.
Just recently, my mother-in-law hawked her solid-gold Iranian coins, the last vestiges of her homeland, in order to help her daughter, my wife, during this insufferable bout of financial hardship. We expect our new landlord should be satisfied, but probably won’t be until he has his pound of flesh thrown into the bargain.
The encouraging thing about these otherwise sad life stories, is that change is possible: sometimes, even, violent change: radical social upheaval that comes when it is least expected. Vast fortunes can be reversed, sometimes in a matter of days. And we know from history that no empire endures forever.
This is the flimsy basis of my revolutionary hope for Australia. Imagine a truly egalitarian society without either landlords or tenants: that’s my great Australian dream. Under pain of exile (or worse), the landlords, estate agents, bankers and politicians would be divested of their wealth and then given a simple choice: Take It or Leave It.
Cop it sweet, when that time comes, you landlords, politicians, bankers, et al. Chalk it up to the vicissitudes of life. From this, nobody is immune.