Lucky country
Don't you just hate it when three out of five of the free to air channels go down in the middle of a game? Bah! It really makes you want to go out and, well, get Foxtel or something. Anyway, that’s the way On the Pulse saw it, as it decided to get its backside out of the lounge chair and catch up with some news from the Internet instead. There, and On the Pulse found two Syrian refugees, Emir and Sabeen, from Damascus who now live in Jordan and never complain about their TV stations dropping out. They don’t have one in the barn they live in, which once housed chickens and now holds a lingering smell, dampness, and insects. They fled with their children to Jordan more than two years ago, leaving behind a comfortable school teacher's salary and their passports.
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Now they struggle to eat. Emir teaches his landlord's three children for the equivalent of A$30 a week, while Sabeen can sometimes earn A$10 extra a week. It barely covers their rented barn, let alone groceries, water, electricity and medical fees. Then On the Pulse found news of Ethiopia, where more than 10 million people now face food shortages due to ongoing drought conditions. At the start of 2015, about 2.9 million people faced food shortages, now there’s 10 million, and that number is projected to rise to more than 15 million in 2016. OTP decided not to join those complaining on chat about not having TV stations. OTP went back to the lounge chair and sat there for a very long time, thinking about this lucky country we live in, and just what that Foxtel subscription could mean to someone if it was paid to the Red Cross.
On the road again
On the Pulses eyebrows shot skywards this week when it learned that more Australians aged 80-plus are more likely to drive than 18-24 year-olds. All older age groups are now more likely to be encountered on the roads than their younger counterparts. In 2007, driving incid-ence peaked at 93 per cent of peo-ple aged 35-49. That peak is still 93 per cent, but today it’s among 50-64 year-olds, and those aged 16 or 17 are also slightly less likely to drive than they were eight years ago. An ageing population? Perhaps. But OTP couldn’t help wondering if the reluctance of our very intelligent youth could be directly proportional to the percentage of all those oldies on the road.
