Science, chained to technocracy, in turn the slave of corporate capitalism, leads to madhouse developments, such as growing mini human brains, then worrying about whether or not the brains are conscious (while late term abortions freely take place):
  https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/mini-human-brains-grown-in-laboratory-could-be-conscious/news-story/667fb687c9bcb8bb50a61a6b79d324cc

“Scientists have picked up human-like electrical activity in lab-grown brains for the first time, paving the way to model neurological conditions and answer fundamental questions on how our grey matter develops. It’s not clear whether the pea-sized brains are conscious: The team behind the breakthrough suspect they’re not because the activity resembles that of preterm babies, but they cannot say for certain, opening up a new ethical dimension to this area of research. So-called “cerebral organoids” derived from adult stem cells have been around for a decade or so but have never previously developed functional neural networks. “If you had asked me five years ago, ‘Would you think that a brain organoid would ever have a sophisticated network able to generate a brain oscillation?’ I would say no,” Alysson Muotri, a biologist at the University of California San Diego, told AFP.”

     It all began with the good old politically correct New York Times, publishing a hit piece 2.0 claiming that US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted a female as a student. The allegations were first raised against The Kav by others,  when he was being assessed for fitness to serve on the bench, but these allegations proved to be groundless. Anyway, the NYT article’s ink had hardly dried of its 1s and 0s on the net, when every Leftist and their dog Marx, were barking for The Kav to be impeached. Having a conservative judge worries the Left as much as a conservative president. Only problem was that this story too began to fall apart, as the alleged victim did not remember the assault, and does not want to talk to the media. Still, the NYT went ahead with the false news story, and we can quote President Trump on that description.
  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/sunday-review/brett-kavanaugh-deborah-ramirez-yale.html
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/09/16/nolte-new-york-times-forced-to-admit-kavanaugh-victim-doesnt-remember-assault/
  https://apnews.com/b166b4bf4698411eaf2a13fdf2d4bd9c
  https://thehill.com/homenews/media/461530-new-york-times-issues-correction-on-kavanaugh-story
  https://www.zerohedge.com/political/nyt-chases-down-kavanaugh-dick-waving-stories-1980s
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/09/15/democrats-call-justice-brett-kavanaugh-impeached/
  https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2019/09/15/book-alleged-victim-of-brett-kavanaugh-does-not-recall-incident/
  https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-defends-kavanaugh-against-radical-left-democrats-and-urges-him-to-start-suing
  https://www.zerohedge.com/political/nyt-forced-issue-major-correction-kavanaugh-hit-piece-trump-says-they-should-be-sued
  https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-seethes-nyt-demands-resignation-all-involved-kavanaugh-smear-story-and-russian

“Headlined “Brett Kavanaugh Fit In With the Privileged Kids. She Did Not,” the story was primarily about Deborah Ramirez, a Connecticut woman who alleged that Kavanaugh, as a freshman at Yale in 1983, had pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her. Kavanaugh has denied those claims. Yet the authors said they’d uncovered a similar story involving Kavanaugh at another freshman-year party, where he allegedly exposed himself and friends pushed his penis into the hands of a female student. The story said former classmate Max Stier reported the incident to the FBI and senators as Kavanaugh’s nomination was being discussed, but the story said Stier would not discuss it with the authors. Kavanaugh would not comment on the story, a court spokeswoman said Monday. After the story was posted online but before it was in the print edition, the Times revised the story to add that the book reported that the woman supposedly involved in the incident declined to be interviewed, and that her friends say she doesn’t recall the incident. While an editor’s note pointed out the revision, it did not say why those facts had been left out in the first place. A Times spokeswoman said no one was available for an interview on Monday. The Times’ deputy editorial page editor, James Dao, posted answers to readers’ question on the newspaper’s website Monday evening but did not address this issue. The failure to initially report that the woman did not remember the alleged incident “is one of the worst cases of journalistic malpractice in recent memory,” John McCormack wrote in the conservative magazine National Review. The Washington Post, detailing its own decision on the story, called into question the Times’ decision to run with the accusation in the first place. The Post said that last year it had independently confirmed that lawmakers and authorities knew of the second accusation against Kavanaugh, but did not write about it because the woman involved would not comment and the alleged witnesses were not identified.

     Tongan officials have armed themselves with legal advice that suggests the NRL is powerless to prevent them selecting Israel Folau to make a shock return to rugby league in Test matches against Great Britain and Australia next month. Folau, sacked by Rugby Australia earlier this year after a social media post declaring gays were destined to go to hell unless they repented, is understood to have spoken to his legal team in Melbourne over his ability to turn out for the Tongan rugby league side. The NRL was scrambling on Monday night to block Folau’s comeback after being caught off guard by a press release from the Tongan National Rugby League suggesting Folau and his brother John were ready to turn out for the Tongan national team, the Mate Ma’a. In a statement released through social media, TNRL­ chairman George Koloamatangi said the Folau brothers were set to play against Great Britain on October 26 and Australia one week later at Eden Park in Auckland. The statement also said neither player was available for the World Cup 9s tournament to be played in Sydney on October 19 because the event was controlled by the NRL. Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter Beattie and NRL chief executive Todd Greenberg have already made it clear Folau is not welcome back. Remarkably, both men are on the Rugby League International Federation and were unaware of Folau’s planned return.

To The Age        It is sad to learn that shadows have been cast over the reputation of the late Catholic psychologist Ronald Conway ("'Little harm' in child abuse: church expert', 19/9). Whatever the truth of accusations made against him, he deserves the gratitude of Australians for three important and substantial books. In The Great Australian Stupor (1971) and Land of the Long Weekend (1978) he provided profound analyses of our national society from a centre-right perspective. These provide a sane and witty riposte to the mass of left-wing and Marxist commentaries produced then and later. Also, in his autobiography Conway's Way (1988) this gentle and industrious man offered important insights into how religion in the Western world can be revitalised. "The only hope for the Christian vision lies in a revival of a true spirituality," he commented in 'A Small Testament', the last chapter. He was refreshingly free from out-of-date theological prejudices. As one who knew him personally for 44 years, I recall with gratitude his wry, humorous but deeply sensible character.
  Nigel Jackson,

     Russia, who is bravely standing against the maelstrom of modernist madness, has been criticised for being an “abnormal country.” Yet, in an age of near total insanity, this surely a moral victory, being an inversion of foul is fair and fair is foul:
  https://www.rt.com/news/468423-pentagon-russia-normal-country/

“It’s better not to be a “more normal country” if that means being as prone to invasions and coups as the United States, top Russian ministers have said, firing back at bizarre remarks by a new Pentagon chief. It would be “great” if the West “could get Russia to behave like a more normal country,” Mark Esper, the newly appointed defense secretary, was reported to have claimed while visiting Paris this week. That remark did not go down well with Moscow, however. “If he said so, he called upon us to act as a normal country [as such] and not like the United States,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a press briefing in the Russian capital, where he and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu had a face-to-face meeting with French counterparts. Otherwise, we should have been acting like the US, bombing Iraq and Libya in blatant violation of international law… We should have supported coups, violent and anti-constitutional, like the US and its closest allies did in February 2014 [in Ukraine]. What's more, if Russia followed Washington’s instructions, then “we would have spent millions on intervening in the affairs of other countries as Congress has done by authorizing $20 million for supporting democracy in Russia,” Lavrov stated. On his part, Shoigu also said that normalcy has a different meaning for Moscow then. We will probably remain [an] abnormal [country].”

Our grandfathers built a low-cost reliable decentralised electricity supply for all states of Australia based mainly on black and brown coal-fields – Blair Athol, Callide, Ipswich, Sydney/Newcastle, Yallourn, Leigh Creek and Collie.

Then our fathers built the mighty Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric scheme which provided water to irrigate the inland while generating electricity to help pay for it.

Then in the years up to 1980, huge new coal-fired power plants were constructed in each State. And we discovered oil and gas in Roma, Bass Strait, Barrow Island, Timor Sea, and in coal and shale in many places.

Coal and hydro gave Australia reliable low-cost electricity that was the envy of the world and supported primary, secondary and tertiary industries.

We irrigated crops, electrified cities, powered railways and mines, refined metals and petroleum and processed milk, wool, cotton, grains, meat and fruit. Factories made Victa mowers, Southern Cross windmills and diesel engines. Holden/Ford/Toyota and Mitsubishi all produced cars in Australia and we made 9 brands of tractors. The Ipswich railway workshops produced locomotives and rolling stock, and Lithgow produced small arms. We canned Golden Circle pineapples, Ardmona stone fruits, Rosella jams and made Bully Beef, tomato sauce and Vegemite.

Australia once valued decentralisation and it served us well in electricity supply. Electricity generation and distribution was left in the hands of state-based engineers and entrepreneurs, and competitive state governments strove to ensure their states had the most reliable low-cost electricity. In those days a state “Co-ordinator General” was charged with predicting demand for electricity and then ensuring that power stations were built in the right place at the right time. The distant Federal Government largely confined itself to defence, foreign affairs, immigration and quarantine (with increasing meddling into wage setting, welfare and devaluation of the currency).

     I recently criticised an article by leading neo-masculinity/barbarianism writer, Jack Donovan, where he argued that all one can really advocate in US post politics now is support for the US Bill of Rights. Well, so much the worse for Australia, England and other countries without one, and even having one does not mean much, as recent article expressed:
  https://www.zerohedge.com/political/bill-rights-turns-230-and-what-do-we-have-show-it-nothing-good

“It’s been 230 years since James Madison drafted the Bill of Rights - the first ten amendments to the Constitution - as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, and what do we have to show for it?
Nothing good. In America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned. We can pretend that the Constitution, which was written to hold the government accountable, is still our governing document, but the reality of life in the American police state tells a different story. “We the people” have been terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties. The bogeyman’s names and faces have changed over time (terrorism, the war on drugs, illegal immigration, etc.), but the end result remains the same: in the so-called named of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded to such an extent that what we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago. Most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights. A recitation of the Bill of Rights—set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches (all sanctioned by Congress, the White House, the courts and the like)—would understandably sound more like a eulogy to freedoms lost than an affirmation of rights we truly possess.

     Soon the government will be able to recognise your beautiful face everywhere, maybe in places where you have not even gone, such as crime scenes:
  https://www.9news.com.au/national/a-current-affair-facial-recognition-technology-australia-surveillance/ee91eacf-1c6c-4a1d-bba9-0d400984217c

“Privacy advocates have issued a warning about a new proposed government facial recognition database, saying: "This changes the nature of the world we're in." Dubbed "The Capability", the system would match images of people captured on CCTV with their driver's license and passport photos. The database could be shared with government agencies, police and anti-corruption agencies and, in some cases, private organisations. "They're going to use this database with face recognition to be able to pick people out so you'll be able to take CCTV footage and be able to automatically identify people," Professor Toby Walsh, from the University of New South Wales, told A Current Affair. "The government hasn't shown itself to be too competent at looking after our data and if bad actors are out there they could use that data for whatever purposes." Professor Walsh is an expert in artificial intelligence, and told A Current Affair the technology is similar to surveillance software used in China. The cameras are the back-bone of the country's "social credit system" which awards or deducts points depending on a citizen's behaviour. If a person's rating gets too low, they could be prevented from doing everyday activities like catching the train or flying.”

     Softbois, or spelling it out “Soft Boys,” (closely related to “Soy Boys”) is what many boys, I don’t call them men, are today, the product of a feminist society and testosterone destroying chemicals, and emasculated lifestyles.  Here the Left can explain it, since they helped create it:
  https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/sep/05/softboi-what-is-it-instagram-q-and-a

“There’s a softboi spectrum. At one end, it’s just anyone who has any unique or alternative interests that make them feel superior to other people. At the other end is quite hardcore emotionally manipulative men who use these interests to really mess about with women or men. But there’s so many people in between on the spectrum so there’s no one real definition. What are three terms you’d use to describe a softboi? Alternative. Superiority complex. Emotionally exploitative. You can assign those qualities to a lot of people, but you’re saying it’s the alternativeness that gives the bois their soft edge? Yeah, exactly. Softbois have alternative interests and come across like they’re being very open about their emotions, which is a really good thing for men to do. But it then twists into “and you should therefore sleep with me because of this”. Another common thing with softbois is that they turn quite emotionally messed up when they get rejected. For example: one guy [featured on the account] messaged a girl on Tinder saying “don’t be sad life is wonderful”, and when she didn’t reply he wrote “lol you must be one of those emotionally distraught women who hasn’t figured out their purpose yet”.

     No doubt about it, totalitarianism does not come cheap nowadays; the cashless welfare trial of the card on just 2,000 lab subjects, sorry, people, has already cost the haemorrhaging taxpayer, $ 18.9 million. Well, at first, I thought this was $ 189 million, and that would not have surprised me either; nothing surprises me anymore. Still, the system wants it because it is cashless, and can be used to smash the unemployed deplorables, whom the elite like to metaphorically hunt like those predator creatures in the movies of the same name:
  https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/may/02/cashless-welfare-card-trialled-for-fewer-than-2000-people-at-cost-of-up-to-189m
  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-02/cashless-welfare-trial-costing-taxpayers-$10k-per-participant/8488268

“The federal government is spending up to $18.9m to trial the cashless welfare card for fewer than 2,000 people. Data published by the Department of Social Services under freedom of information reveals that is the “estimated maximum” cost of the trial. The trial involves about 1,850 people, according to the most recent evaluation, published in February, although it had about 2,000 participants in October. The program has cost the department $2.6m in administration costs and the private firm providing the cards, Indue, is on a $7.9m contract. The government has paid $1m and $1.6m for wrap-around support services in Ceduna (South Australia) and the East Kimberley respectively. The Australian Council of Social Service said the government was continuing the program at an extraordinary cost, despite the lack of reliable evidence of its effectiveness. Its chief executive, Cassandra Goldie, said the money should be diverted to investing in proven support services. “The cashless debit card costs around $10,000 a year per participant to administer, when the person themselves is receiving a meagre $14,000 a year in Newstart payments. How on earth is this good value?” Goldie said.”

     Wow, this one has almost everything, and everybody, coming along for a fun Sunday drive, with cut lunches and kids, falling out of the car, as it strolls along:
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7459339/Police-working-Border-Force-Red-Rose-Day-Care-fraud-scam.html?ico=pushly-notifcation-small

“Police are working with the Department of Immigration after 39 people were charged over an alleged daycare fraud syndicate. Twenty-two mothers in south west Sydney were arrested and charged this week after 17 people were charged in May over the alleged rort. Police allege they took part in a huge childcare scam which gained $4million in just nine months. In a press conference on Thursday, Acting Assistant Commissioner of State Crime Command Stuart Smith said police were working with immigration. Police usually work with border protection when a suspect is a recent arrival whose alleged crimes may deny them the right to remain in the country. The man who allegedly masterminded the scam, Alee Farmann, is an Iraqi refugee.”

     It reminds me of the comedy game show, Would I Lie to You … after the failure of banning guns in New Zealand, with few people willing to turn over their unregistered weapons, we have the political career of Jacinda Ardern under question because of this:
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7458607/New-Zealand-Prime-Minister-Jacinda-Ardern-forced-resign-sexual-assault-scandal.html?ico=pushly-notifcation-small
  https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12267036

“A sexual assault allegation that rocked the New Zealand Labour party has tarnished Jacinda Ardern's reputation and led to speculation that she could be forced to quit as prime minister. A male Labour party staffer resigned after he was accused of assaulting a 19-year-old female volunteer and harassing other party members. The teenager told The Spinoff that she was pinned down and sexually assaulted by the man in 2018. Labour president Nigel Haworth also quit over the party's handling of the investigation. Ms Ardern said she was not aware of the sexual assault claim until it was published in the media - but opposition leader Simon Bridges has claimed she knew about it earlier than that. 'I think she knew. All very well, it may be that the president is in the wrong, but when you think about this, the prime minister, if you stand back and look at it, is ducking and diving accountability,' he told Newshub. You have this in the media and indeed her being interviewed about alleged sexual assaults for several weeks now... I think she knew and she is saying she didn't.' Mr Bridges said Mr Haworth was the 'fall guy' for Ms Ardern, and claimed the prime minister had 'done the least possible every step of the way - it's just wrong'. Political commentator Duncan Garner said Ms Ardern could be forced to stand down as prime minister. 'Ms Ardern has squandered a massive lead - like a racing car driver a lap ahead crashing into the side wall. I simply can't say with certainty if Ms Ardern is going to walk away from this mass pile up,' he wrote for Newshub. 'I can't rule out that she may be forced to resign as prime minister.'

     Look, hear it from leading economist Paul Krugman:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6noQVuIP_74

"...rural, white Americans who feel they're losing their country, their ownership of the country and they're right...in the end, they're not the future..."

     My duty is to keep the people up to date on apocalyptic nuclear war news. There has been another nuke threat made by Pakistan against India by former cricket legend prime minister Imran Khan:
  https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/imran-hints-n-war-as-a-consequence-of-pak-losing-conventional-war/articleshow/71141092.cms

     Apparently, this site does not permit cut and paste, so I looked deeper and found this, about India’s nuclear threat, with an obvious Pakistan bias:
  https://www.dawn.com/news/1500350

     Mike Adams has a new site devoted to the global conspiracy to kill us deplorables off, the “oblivion agenda”:
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-09-16-new-site-oblivion-agenda-globalist-agenda-for-annihilation.html
  https://oblivionagenda.com/
  https://www.brighteon.com/ebe21afb-a26b-451e-b71f-e5534d6b9422

    Nothing beats a grand conspiracy linking it all together:

     I have been predicting for some time now that the next big thing of the progressives would be to deconstruct, and normalise paedophilia, and there have been moves in the media to do so, careful ones, but that was how it was done in the gender agenda in the early 1960s. As usual, the universities are moving on this one:
  https://summit.news/2019/09/15/ohio-college-normalizes-pedophilia-as-a-sexual-orientation/

“San Diego State University is teaching students that pedophilia could merely be considered to be an alternative “sexual orientation.” “An actual topic we discussed in class today at a State University after watching an 8-minute Vice News video showcasing self-identified pedophiles. This is going to be mainstreamed,” tweeted Alex Mazzara. The photo shows a presentation slide entitled ‘Pedophilia as a Sexual Orientation’. It suggests that embracing pedophilia as an alternative sexual orientation could be part of the “acceptance of diverse sexual identities.” The VICE video showcasing pedophiles may well have been their platforming of Todd Nickerson, a self-confessed pedophile. VICE’s article about Nickerson sympathetically portrayed him, an individual who openly admits wanting to molest children, as a victim of right-wing “vigilantes”. Conservatives have been warning for years that the ultimate endgame of every fetish, gender identity and sexuality being not merely tolerated but endorsed would eventually be the mainstreaming of pedophilia.”

     It all started with declaring those opposing the Great Replacement of whites as terrorists, and then it swept to conservative Christian sites, and now alternative health. The terrorism bit comes from the establishment view that all  Right (never Left) conspiracy theorists are terrorist, that is how the word is now defined. Such is the sweeping nature of totalitarianism, coming to a street near you:
  https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/09/17/pharmaceutical-industry-bad-reputation.aspx

“The pharmaceutical industry is now the most distrusted and poorly regarded industry in the U.S. This according to the latest Gallup Poll published September 3, 2019, which assesses Americans' views of 25 industry sectors on an annual basis. A mere 27% have a "totally positive" view of the drug industry, while 58% have a "totally negative" view; 15% are neutral. It's an unexpected turn of events, surely, as signs of growing distrust have become more readily evident. Big Pharma distrust was also blamed for "fueling the anti-vaxxer movement and playing a role in the measles outbreak" in an April 2019 article in USA Today. Quoted in the article, vaccine profiteer and patent holder Dr. Paul Offit also capitalizes on the recent revelation that the FBI now views conspiracy theories as a "significant domestic terrorism threat." "'In order to believe vaccines are hurting you means your doctor is lying to you,' Offit says. To believe that, 'on some level you have to be a conspiracy theorist' who believes the industry is 'directing the government and the health care industry to lie about vaccines.'" In other words, if you have doubts about vaccine safety and would like to see more evidence, you're a conspiracy theorist, placing you in the category of a domestic terrorist threat. At least that's what Offit would like you to think. The fact is, lies are being told about vaccines. As just one example, and an egregious one, in a January 2019 interview with CBS News, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), flat-out denied that vaccines can cause injury or death. That is not only misinformation, it's an outright lie. Since 1988, the federally operated vaccine injury compensation program (VICP) created under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 has paid out about $4 billion in awards to vaccine injured victims, and that's just 31% of the petitions filed for compensation.”

     Who knows what crazy stuff is going on in genetic engineering labs, least of all the mad Dr Frankenstein scientists who lurk in their damp and dark corridors?
  https://www.zerohedge.com/health/brazil-experiment-may-have-accidentally-created-genetically-modified-super-mosquitos
  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49660-6

“In an attempt to control the mosquito-borne diseases yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya, and Zika fevers, a strain of transgenically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes containing a dominant lethal gene has been developed by a commercial company, Oxitec Ltd. If lethality is complete, releasing this strain should only reduce population size and not affect the genetics of the target populations. Approximately 450 thousand males of this strain were released each week for 27 months in Jacobina, Bahia, Brazil. We genotyped the release strain and the target Jacobina population before releases began for >21,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Genetic sampling from the target population six, 12, and 27–30 months after releases commenced provides clear evidence that portions of the transgenic strain genome have been incorporated into the target population. Evidently, rare viable hybrid offspring between the release strain and the Jacobina population are sufficiently robust to be able to reproduce in nature. The release strain was developed using a strain originally from Cuba, then outcrossed to a Mexican population. Thus, Jacobina Ae. aegypti are now a mix of three populations. It is unclear how this may affect disease transmission or affect other efforts to control these dangerous vectors. These results highlight the importance of having in place a genetic monitoring program during such releases to detect un-anticipated outcomes.”

     We can still find pieces on YouTube, amazingly, on female hypergamy, the primal instinct for women to strive to achieve more alpha mates, and providers. Even those  having high paying jobs, if heterosexual, seek this, unless constrained by Christian morality of some moral code. Go back to the jungle, which is what modern nihilist society is, and that what one gets, well documented in a book the Left hate intensely, Sexual Utopia in Power: the Feminist Revolt Against Civilization, by F. Roger Devlin (Counter-currents, 2015). Jordan Peterson has an excellent video on this topic too:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7LN14IpVy0

     Lots of conservative, and even libersal ladies discuss the same thing, so anyone thinking that the topic can be put off limits by rattling on about “anti-women” well, just forget it. The girls tell you to do so, so obey! It is interesting to get the perspective of young Black women on the horrible sexual market place that the feminist regime, and the 1960s “liberation” has produced:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MArSRmp73co
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEiuTLqa6tQ
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB7qKbZWoWk
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBgf2Q7WPok

To The Australian         Ann Rennie rightly praises traditional teaching styles ("Teachers: thought leaders and influencers", 17/9) when she notes that in the past (more often, alas, than in the present) "deep knowledge and passion for a subject was passed on by well-educated, erudite and occasionally eccentric enthusiasts." These old-style teachers had permanent tenure, were respected by parents and society as a whole, and were not handicapped by having to spend hours and hours on unnecessary clerical work and "professional improvement" courses. An important aspect of their carrying out of their roles was humility. Another was recognition that, while all roads lead to God (not to Rome, thank you!), there are different roads by which individuals can travel. They were not fanatics, misusing the classroom to engage in facile indoctrination into simplistic ideology and rude activism. How can we return to that Golden Age? One essential is courage. Teachers opposed to declining standards in their profession and their supporters in wider society must outspokenly contest the factors that have led to the corruption of the education process. The defence of intellectual freedom is paramount.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic