Posts by Joe Wylie
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Yes. but thinking about it, it's hard to see what else the allies could have done?
Good question. In the years I spent in Australia I made a number of East European friends and acquaintances, and was initially surprised by those who had aging relatives with dodgy collaborative pasts living in suburban obscurity. From the "broken" Slovak former SS man to the unrepentant Croatian Ustaše uncle there was no sense of repentance, particularly during the years of the cold war, when being demonstrably anti-communist was an unquestioned virtue.
The case of Wehrmacht General Reinhard_Gehlen seems to be fairly typical of those who were able to leverage valuable intelligence skills and information to gain favourable treatment from their new overlords. Like Kriegsmarine chief (and Hitler's technical successor) Karl Dönitz, Gehlen had no demonstrable connection with the holocaust, which presumably would have precluded him from being politically rehabilitated.
Dönitz was convicted of war crimes at Nuremburg and served ten years, while the vastly more useful Gehlen, with his carefully secreted stash of microfilmed records from his time as head of intelligence on the Eastern front, promptly became head of West Germany's spy bureau, and went on to be awarded that country's highest civil order.
-
Thank you Hilary, I'll be doing so this weekend.
By its nature respite care is a temporary measure, and it just happens that the person in question has elected to go into full-time care by next winter. While the availability of respite care is no longer the issue of the moment, thanks to Sacha and Hilary for providing clarity and direction, and the impetus to do something constructive about it. Your blood, as they say, is worth bottling.
It's encouraging to see disability treated as a universal human issue, rather than the fragmented approach of focusing on the problems of a particular group.
-
Oh, you want swastika redemption? Then allow me to
show you the crazy.Ah, remember him/her from Juxtapoz many years ago. But Man-Woman is crazy? Whatever the case, he/she's worth an infinite number of Mengeles. Or Lincoln twits.
-
Thanks Sacha, though it ain't me that's requiring the respite - well, not yet. As it's largely been about respite from the rigours of winter the crisis is past for the moment.
There are things I could and should do, such as contact Age Concern and see if they're prepared to talk about this specific case. In that context, Hilary's info appears to be very useful.
If this isn't a deliberate cutting back of welfare resources to the elderly then I'll have to stand corrected. From Hilary's info it appears to be ultimately the Minister's responsibility, regardless.
IMHE those currently in their 80s - and increasingly 90s - tend to have a low-key sense of entitlement, based on a tradition of welfare according to need, along with their memories of war and depression. When their privileges are curtailed they tend to take it perhaps a little too philosophically.
-
-
No, but I think that somethings wrong with the spelling.
Nah, that's the kind of tsunami you get in a vat of soy sauce - or maybe just a large wave chocka with anchovies.
-
Our Premier is Mike Rann, who grew up in New Zealand. I've started to wonder whether that's significant.
Perhaps, though South Australia does have something of a proud (by Oz standards) progressive tradition. The remarkable - for his time - Don Dunstan left a legacy that even the ghastly John Wayne Olsen couldn't ease.
-
Thanks Sacha, I'd be happy to do what I can. My info comes from dealing with the needs of an elderly - and increasingly infirm - relative. While hopefully there's a relatively trouble-free late-life summer in the offing, it's kind of the issue of the moment for me.
-
the last wave may have been very entertaining for whiteys but it came close to killing David.
So, sadly enough, I've heard. Of course a few years earlier he suicided on screen in Nicholas Roeg's Walkabout. Also there was a ghastly gratuitous walk-on part in The Right Stuff.
BTW has anyone read Xavier Herbert's great slab of a novel Poor Fellow My Country? Or the earlier - and weirder - Capricornia? Probably a thoroughly unpleasant human being, and more often than not a truly irritating writer, it's the remorseless authenticity of his stories and settings that makes him highly readable. There are elements in the maestro of smug & shallow's Australia that could only have been plundered from Poor Fellow My Country. It's a marvel how such a festering boil of an epic could be rendered into a cloying slab of cheese .
-
Hilary, can't find anything official, but this I know from my own experience: In May it was still two weeks. By mid-July it had been reduced to one week. A number of other such welfare entitlements appear to have been similarly halved.
I believe that applications for respite care are approved by GPs. Someone who deals with those kind of cases will likely be up with the details.