How to get rich. Oh, and lonely. Well, you can’t have everything…

Soapbox warning, so brace yourself. I clambered up here on Thursday when I was listening to the news on the radio in the car and heard the richest woman in the world, Gina Rinehart, and her kind advice on how get rich.

Via the medium of ABC news radio I found out that if we want to be as wealthy as Gina all we need to do is to stop moaning about not having money, get out of the pub, put down the smokes, dump our friends and work more. Gee, thanks Gina, that bit of class snobbery really helps us. Does it mean that since I don’t smoke or spend any time in the pub I am rich? Just let me check… Hmmm… No, don’t see any change to the bank balance. Bugger, it seems getting filthy rich is not that easy.

The Daily News 29 Mar 1947 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article78212042

I think that Gina has overlooked a few crucial details though.  She hardly had to pull herself up by her own bootstraps, did she? Her dad was mining magnate Lang Hancock. (This article on the right details a rescue that Mr. Hancock performed in 1947, bravely landing his private plane at Mulga Downs station to rescue the station managers sick son.)

Gina was an only child, born into wealth. She is hardly a poster child for telling us plebs how to better ourselves, is she? The hardest thing Gina had to do in order to be rich was to keep her step mother, the scary Rose Porteous, at bay!

Gina also wants to lower the minimum wage. I’m not sure that the lower classes working more and getting paid less for it will actually make more millionaires out of us, although that is what she claims to be trying to do. Maybe she has a very creative team of accountants helping her with her sums?

I know there are bludgers out there that do sit on their butts, whining about being broke, and don’t actually do anything to change their situation, but for the majority of us there is no amount of hard work that will make us millionaires, let alone billionaires like Gina.

Actually, I feel far less envious of Gina Rinehart than I do sorry for her. She has been in the news a lot lately for things that are wealth related and not in a good way. It would appear that the one of the ways she has found to stay rich was not to take her own advice on restricting her spending and socializing, but to sneakily make sure that the proceeds from a family trust stayed under her control rather than being distributed to her children. (Daily Telegraph, Herald-Sun)

Unsurprisingly, she was resistant about details of the case against her children being released to the public, she must have known that fighting with your family over money when you are already obscenely rich is a terrible thing. What amount of money would ever make up for alienating your kids?

Sorry Gina, I would rather less money and a happy family life. Keep your opinions to yourself. We don’t want to be you.

Launching the Parthia. 1947.

I really have no reason to post about this article. It is not connected to current news and has no Fortean undercurrent, in fact it is just an item of news. The reason I am posting it is that I think it is just a beautiful photo.

If you had spent as much time as I have flicking through old newspaper images you would be as excited as I am to find such a clear photo. It even shows the shine at the front of the ship!

So many times I find articles that describe an exciting photo, only for me to find the accompanying image is a black blob that seems to have absolutely no relation to the thing I was hoping to see. Grrrr. The quality of newspaper production has certainly come a long way in recent years!

The ship in this photo is called the Parthia. Sadly she was considered uneconomic and sold to P&O in 1961. Her name was changed a few times before she was sent to Taiwan in 1969 to be broken up. What a waste. This ship originally belonged to the White Star Line, a company we all know better for their ill-fated ship, the Titanic.

So here you are, for no reason except my appreciation of it, a photo taken at the Harland and Wolff’s shipyard of the launch of the newest ship in the Cunard White Star Lines fleet, the Parthia in 1947.

Launching the Parthia. Singleton Argus 25 April 1947 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article82366950

Overthrowing a government can be deadly. 1947. Or, Kevin vs Julia. 2012.

mach·i·na·tion
n.

1. The act of plotting.

2. A crafty scheme or cunning design for the accomplishment of a sinister end.

(thefreedictionary.com)

Machination is the perfect word to describe what ex-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his supporters in the Australian government have been doing for the last few weeks, culminating in the events of today, and those that will fill the newspapers next Monday.

You have to understand that Australians in general don’t take politics and government too seriously.  We don’t like to vote, and the person who gets in is usually the least disliked one, not the most popular. In Australia you won’t see any of those well-attended love-ins politicians get in the US. The biggest reason people go to see their local member here is to have a shout at them and tell them what a crap job they are doing. We view politics a bit like a car race, our ears only really perk up when something goes wrong and one of the leaders crashes.

Kevin Rudd crashed and burned in spectacular style a few years ago when Julia Gillard performed an unexpected manoeuver, cutting him off and sending him plunging over a cliff. She took over the leadership herself in quite a nasty and personal attack on Kevin, and became our first female Prime Minister . Nobody really cared that unpopular, micro-managing, double-speak Kevin wasn’t in charge, but in overthrowing her boss, Julia proved the thing that we all know to be true. Politicians can’t be trusted. She never reached the level of popularity or respect a properly elected leader should have, even after an election kept her in power.

Kevin seemed to take the criticism and personal attacks to heart, spending his time as the new foreign minister making friends overseas and rolling up his trousers to help out flood victims in Queensland in an attempt to revamp his image and convince us he was really a good guy.

We didn’t believe it, and all suspected that he was spending his spare time in a dark lair formulating an evil plan to take Julia down. We were right. Yesterday we heard that Kevin was throwing in his job as the foreign minister and cutting short a junket in Washington. He was coming home to have a showdown with his arch-nemesis. Today we hear Julia has called for a leadership ballot on Monday morning. We are all a bit sick of Julia now, so Kevin and his efforts to undermine her have piqued our interest again. Really though, we all just wish they would shut up and get on with the job of running the country, or let someone else do it.

The Advertiser 18 Aug 1947 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article35993888

I laughed at this article from 1947, if this was the punishment for plotting against the government here there would be nobody left! I am sure that Julia would love to mete out the same kind of punishment to Kevin and his supporters. Death, with a side order of jail,  heavy fines and revocation of citizenship.

Unfortunately, the loser of the showdown on Monday will get a job on the backbench and still collect a paycheck the size of which the rest of us would kill for. Any remaining shred of credibility either of them had is the only thing that has been sentenced to death.

Not much of a punishment for all the ridiculous media speculation we have been subjected to for weeks. For some time we expected that this leadership spill was nothing but a beat-up.

The media frenzy bought to mind the hilarious shows Frontline, an Australian comedy from the 90’s satirizing current affairs, and The Hollowmen a satirical look at what really goes on behind the scenes in a political department.

Have a look on youtube.

This Frontline clip is called Point Scoring and Emotional Manipulation http://youtu.be/Cwfne1aYA3g . The Ray Martin hairstyle on Mike always cracks me up and the fashions are dated. Nevertheless, the subject is just as fresh as ever and I bet those same conversations are going on in news rooms around the world right now.

The Hollowmen; http://youtu.be/7XeQin9abx4 and we just know that this is how politics really is.

Not really showing her christmas spirit. 1947.

The Argus 26 Dec 1947 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article22528626

Unreasonable family arguments are no doubt something that happened all around the world over christmas, but in 1947 Mr and Mrs Kirtley took a petty fight over their differing levels of christmas spirit to a whole new level.

I am impressed with her story of how her husband managed to get shot though. To say she was shooting her gun out of the window to emphasize her christmas spirit and that he stepped in the way of the bullet shows quite an imagination. I am glad they are not my neighbours!

I expect that the likelihood of being shot by a stressed out family member rises quite considerably during the festive season.

Scary Christmas Head. 1947.

Morning Bulletin 22 Nov 1947 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article56802149

Often kids are afraid of the jolly Santa seated in the christmas display in the local shopping centre. He might be trying to represent christmas day and presents, but to many of them he is just a scary guy in a red outfit.

If Saint Nick doing his best to grant wishes and spread some Christmas cheer can make a child cry, imagine what coming across this big-headed laughing lady would do to them!

It is two sleeps until christmas and we made the mistake today of going to a shopping centre for some last-minute gifts. There was no sign of the austerity christmas the people in this picture from 1947 were expecting. If only that laughing lady was strolling around spreading a little christmas terror through the children there might have been fewer people for us to have to deal with.

Merry Christmas and hopefully Santa brings you all the toys you can handle!

Estranged wife and a birthday cake from above. 1947.

Barrier Miner 15 Apr 1947 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article48494499

My computer and the internet are having relationship problems this week so I see no reason to stray from these appropriate articles about the many, and I suspect turbulent, relationships of the much married Tommy Manville at the moment.

At any time my tenuous connection with the interweb could drop out, and really, he was such a popular fellow these articles are easy to find. Don’t accuse me of laziness, it is really just a kind of speed-posting!

In this article wife number eight is going to send him a birthday cake by helicopter even though they are estranged and have filed assault charges against each other. Hmm, I wonder if the helicopter is going to gently touch down in his lavish gardens and deliver a beautifully decorated cake? I kind of hope it is more like black-clad hitmen with weaponized baking and more assault charges filed in the morning.