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Part 8: Unpleasant Conversation
11 November 2003
Around 4 PM I returned to Puerto Natales from Torres Del Paine. All my
bones and muscles were aching - just took a hot shower and a short nap.
Afternoon - checked email and then had a good dinner - Tina and Jasper had
plan to have dinner with me, but unexpectedly, on the road, they met
neighbours of Jasper’s parents -an elderly couple whom Jasper had known all
his life - it was a sweet surprise for him - so Tina and Jasper had to go
with them. After dinner I returned to Nancy’s - Louis (a London cop)-Sharon and Sam and Jackie (Aust) were
talking around the dining table and made me join them - I went to bed around 1 AM.
12 November 2003
Tina and Jasper left for Ushuaia via Punta Arenas. Sam and Jackie will go
the same way the next day, while Sharon Louise and Margaret will head for
Calafate next day. I had the same plan to go to Calafate first, but when I
found out that flight from Calafate to Ushuaia is expensive and the Bus will
again have to go via Puerto Natales - I changed my plan and decided to follow Sam
and Jackie next day - to Ushuaia via Punta Arenas (1 night stopover).
Finished my diary for the Puerto Mont to Puerto Natales Voyage.
After dinner, again we (Sharon-Louise, Jackie-Sam, Margaret and me) were
sitting around the dining table chatting - they were also drinking some
wine. Sharon is normally a whinger, complaining type, and most of her talks
borders on cynicism. At some stage a little intoxicated Sharon started
asking me a lot of question about how my family and me migrated to Australia
- while it is so hard for them to migrate from UK, etc. At first I was just
answering her question, but soon I was raging inside - from the nature of
her questions and her tone -
I got very cold and told her: Look lassie, you are questioning me as if I
have trespassed into your father's property - first of all Australia is no
body’s fathers property, least of any people from a little island at the
corner of Europe.
She and Louise were shaken by this unexpected response, and started
apologising - saying that she did not mean anything like that - it was just
her frustration.
I was still quite angry, I continued - for us to qualify for Australian
migration and to get a job in Australia, we need to be at least twice as
competent and qualified than an European - I qualified under that stringent
Australian migration law and you did not qualify under a more lenient
criteria - that’s the fact of life, you like it or not.
Sharon’s head went down and she left the table - not to return again. I also went
away for a while - to have a smoke and cool down.
When I returned, it was now intoxicated Louise - who was now raving - how all
the immigrants and the refugees are overburdening the British social welfare
and national health systems - few, in a dubious way, were even raking the
system - he was blaming them for his grandmother's inability to get a date
for a minor operation through the national health system (while she has paid
tax all her life), and so on. By then Margaret has left.
I was just listening; I had no intention to join that discussion.
At some stage Jackie asked me what were my view on these issues -
I said, I definitely have a very different and a long term historic perspective
on these issues, if you want to hear it, I will tell you - they eagerly
nodded, and I started:
To begin with, what Louise’s generation and for that matter his grandmother's
is facing, is a combination of firstly, the residual problems and legacy, left
over from the British empire (in short -they are getting the butt end of the
empire) and secondly, the inevitable failure of the British Social welfare
system that was designed in the hay days post war boom, when west had the absolute
monopoly of industrial production, which was never sustainable in the long run, in the face of inevitable
competition from the emerging nations - first, Japan, then Korea, and now
the waking Chinese and Indian Giants - history shows that no nation or
groups can monopolise knowledge or advantage for a very long time.
The problem is further compounded by the ageing population in the developed
countries, which paradoxically is a by product of development, result of
advances in health and medical sciences. These advances are making people
live longer and also making treatments more advanced but expensive. Thus
sky-rocketing both public pension and healthcare costs. On the other hand,
falling birth rate in the developed countries, largely, again due to the
pressure of fast paced so called developed lifestyle, - creating an
increasing shortage of young people entering the workforce. A huge
demographic shift is taking place, if it continues, in a few decades only
about a third of the population will be working and paying tax in most
developed countries, paying for the social benefit of the other two third
(children and retirees) - which would be absurd. This is the biggest
challenge for all the developed countries - not only to find a solution to
this complex problem, but also to make it politically palatable for a
population who got so used to it.
This demographic shift, and demand for young workers are already driving
some of the illegal and legal migration to the developed countries, often
tacitly encouraged by the big businesses, which prefer to operate in a less
tighter labour market. Combined with the wealth and wage differentials
between the developed and underdeveloped countries, this trend is likely to
increase manyfold.
However, this kind of economic migration is nothing new - people flocked to
India and China for thousands of years (British were the last one) - people
migrated to Persia, to the Roman empire, Ottoman Empire, Byzantine Empire -
wherever the center of wealth was at the different points in history.
With regard to Louise's point about dubious activities of some migrants, I
said: If you compare how a eight shilling a year clerk named Robert Clive
returned from India as a millionaire (well recorded in the British Customs
documents) - or compare it with all the looted jewels and artefacts on proud
display at Tower of London and British Museum, and all the wealth Britain
has accumulated by exploiting its colonies - which allowed it to invent a
five day long game called Cricket -- these petty crimes of few immigrants are
absolutely microscopic.
Louise's Jaws dropped, I continued: however, if you consider few other
historic facts, even at the butt end of the empire your generation is far
better off - for example, without the empire, all those 400-500
odd millions (those who
migrated to USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc.) of
additional people would be living in the British Islands, probably sinking it –
in exchange of that you got only few million migrants, relatively a few
drops only.
Louise did agree to the factual scenario with a dropped head, and said you
old bastard got all the answers.
I said ' no I do not know the answers, I just try to understand
socio-political issues from a historic perspective, because I know that
HISTORY and NATURE PLAY OUT IN GREAT SWEEPS OF TIME - in that scale things
can not be assessed by looking through a narrow timeframe of one's
lifetime or even lifetimes of a few immediate generations - root cause of
many issues were planted many hundreds or even thousands of years back,
subsequent random events shaped it to its current form, over which humans
have very little control - although, they have some uncontrolled influence
from their half understood or misunderstood reactions to the issues of their
times.
Everybody became pensive, and we retired soon after.
At bed, I was thinking - are Sharon and Louise racist, I think not. They are
like ordinary people everywhere else - their curiosity is limited to their
day to day life, their only intended or unintended source of knowledge is
manipulative media (controlled by few elites), which they care to read or
listen. And with that little knowledge, they seek answers to their woes - generally ending up
finding scapegoats for a complex problem they did not have any understanding
of - it is also definitely tempered by the natural human tendency to blame
others. I have seen different manifestations of the same attitude among
Indians, Bangladeshis, Chinese, Singaporeans - you name it - source is
common - ignorance and human nature.
I was also thinking, were the British any worse than the earlier empires,
again probably not very different - same age old game of power-politics , which
started with the first formation of a tribe or village - with the passage of
time it just got bigger, bloodier and complex.
Only thing is that, with the spread of knowledge and it is probably getting
tougher to dupe the ordinary masses - OR IS IT?
Next morning, both Sharon
and Louise sought me out to bid smiling farewells with the wish to meet
again - they were leaving for Calafate in an early morning bus.
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