By now, much of the world has heard of the fires that are raging across Australia. It hasn't been the best end to the year, nor the best start to it - I feel so, so sad for those trying to just survive and hope their houses are okay. This morning the twittersphere was full of contempt for Scott Morrison, who, upon visiting the town of Cobargo, forced a woman to shake his hand who was decidedly unhappy about the whole thing, and then hightailed it to his car as residents heckled him, angry at the lack of support and his unsympathetic leadership.
And so, these current events have raised much controversy - over climate change, over government response, over how to manage such disasters, and so on. It's even filtered it's way to the relatively quiet Steem and #politics#teamaustralia tags (do use #auspolitics too - it makes it easy to find you).
I'll be rewarding these posts with a little bit of POINT via beneficiary on www.talkingpoint.co
@bengy writes a pretty detailed summary which brings us up to speed on the fires to date but also criticises political action - or lack of it - 'from all sides', where the liberal 'liberal government in Australia (centre right) who have managed to completely deny climate change and stymied policies to combat Australia's high per capita pollution levels... through to the Greens who have managed to resist practical policies in favour of idealist perfection. There is more than enough blame to go around... meanwhile, the scientists and policy wonks are just ignored... but it is okay, because the politicians will find themselves in a good "consultancy" job afterwards with no need to take responsibility for their lack of action.'. Well said, @bengy. I hope your relatives are okay and find their way home from Tathra.
@galenkp takes a different approach, asking us to think about being prepared for these kind of disasters. I know I've got bug out supplies in the van and the hubby's cleaning out the gutters as I write. He makes a good point about personal responsibility. Read more here.
@khufu also wrote a post about weather pattern weirdness.I've also read some pretty weird stuff on the internet about the whole East coast being intentionally lit by the government to promote green cities and a rail link between Melb/Sydney - I don't know about that, but I know we live in interesting times!
That's all I can see on the #australia#point#teamaustralia#auspolitics front for now. Encouraging use of the above tags so Aussie current affairs, news and politics get seen on www.talkingpoint.co for POINT token rewards. I'll be upvoting and curating with my delegated point tokens with this account, plus resteeming them and upvoting them with POINT on my @river-point account - supporting Aussies on Steem in my own little way. Love you guys and hope you and those you love stay safe. It's chaos out there.
@river-point