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USA - middle bits - Augusta Georgia

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Augusta Georgia

 

Making our way east we decided to have lunch in Augusta.  Originally we'd considered this as a place to spend a night but friends had suggested Columbia, the capital and second largest city in South Carolina, might offer a better range of accommodation.  On arriving in Augusta their advice seemed to have been well advised.  Despite its famous golf course it's a small place, a little worse for wear, except for an apparently thriving car culture.  There were several historic cars, one an 'E Type' Jaguar and another with enough chrome to blind other road users, even on a dull day. 

There is also a surprisingly large museum featuring an historic steam locomotive with a full set of 'rail cars' and other historic vehicles, in addition to the obvious golf and by now predictable Civil War galleries.  In one gallery we learned that Augusta had an important role manufacturing gunpowder for the Confederate army. Other galleries remember the blues star James Brown, a local son, and local medical infrastructure and achievements.

 


Augusta Museum of History - Click on this picture to see more
 

 

The museum information centre recommended a café across the road.  This turned out to serve traditional African American fare and we joined the other races there and ate in harmony.  This might have surprised someone who's only contact with Augusta had been the museum and who'd seen the segregationist signs and slave shackles displayed there.

 

 

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Travel

Denmark

 

 

  

 

 

In the seventies I spent some time travelling around Denmark visiting geographically diverse relatives but in a couple of days there was no time to repeat that, so this was to be a quick trip to two places that I remembered as standing out in 1970's: Copenhagen and Roskilde.

An increasing number of Danes are my progressively distant cousins by virtue of my great aunt marrying a Dane, thus contributing my mother's grandparent's DNA to the extended family in Denmark.  As a result, these Danes are my children's cousins too.

Denmark is a relatively small but wealthy country in which people share a common language and thus similar values, like an enthusiasm for subsidising wind power and shunning nuclear energy, except as an import from Germany, Sweden and France. 

They also like all things cultural and historical and to judge by the museums and cultural activities many take pride in the Danish Vikings who were amongst those who contributed to my aforementioned DNA, way back.  My Danish great uncle liked to listen to Geordies on the buses in Newcastle speaking Tyneside, as he discovered many words in common with Danish thanks to those Danes who had settled in the Tyne valley.

Nevertheless, compared to Australia or the US or even many other European countries, Denmark is remarkably monocultural. A social scientist I listened to last year made the point that the sense of community, that a single language and culture confers, creates a sense of extended family.  This allows the Scandinavian countries to maintain very generous social welfare, supported by some of the highest tax rates in the world, yet to be sufficiently productive and hence consumptive per capita, to maintain among the highest material standards of living in the world. 

Read more: Denmark

Fiction, Recollections & News

More on 'herd immunity'

 

 

In my paper Love in the time of Coronavirus I suggested that an option for managing Covid-19 was to sequester the vulnerable in isolation and allow the remainder of the population to achieve 'Natural Herd Immunity'.

Both the UK and Sweden announced that this was the strategy they preferred although the UK was soon equivocal.

The other option I suggested was isolation of every case with comprehensive contact tracing and testing; supported by closed borders to all but essential travellers and strict quarantine.   

New Zealand; South Korea; Taiwan; Vietnam and, with reservations, Australia opted for this course - along with several other countries, including China - accepting the economic and social costs involved in saving tens of thousands of lives as the lesser of two evils.  

Yet this is a gamble as these populations will remain totally vulnerable until a vaccine is available and distributed to sufficient people to confer 'Herd Immunity'.

In the event, every country in which the virus has taken hold has been obliged to implement some degree of social distancing to manage the number of deaths and has thus suffered the corresponding economic costs of jobs lost or suspended; rents unpaid; incomes lost; and as yet unquantified psychological injury.

Read more: More on 'herd immunity'

Opinions and Philosophy

Manufacturing in Australia

 

 

 

This article was written in August 2011 after a career of many years concerned with Business Development in New South Wales Australia. I've not replaced it because, while the detailed economic parameters have changed, the underlying economic arguments remain the same (and it was a lot of work that I don't wish to repeat) for example:  

  • between Oct 2010 and April 2013 the Australian dollar exceeded the value of the US dollar and that was seriously impacting local manufacturing, particularly exporters;
  • as a result, in November 2011, the RBA (Reserve Bank of Australia) reduced the cash rate (%) from 4.75 to 4.5 and a month later to 4.25; yet
  • the dollar stayed stubbornly high until 2015, mainly due to a favourable balance of trade in commodities and to Australia's attraction to foreign investors following the Global Financial Crisis, that Australia had largely avoided.

 

 

2011 introduction:

Manufacturing viability is back in the news.

The loss of manufacturing jobs in the steel industry has been a rallying point for unions and employers' groups. The trigger was the announcement of the closure of the No 6 blast furnace at the BlueScope plant at Port Kembla.  This furnace is well into its present campaign and would have eventually required a very costly reline to keep operating.  The company says the loss of export sales does not justify its continued operation. The  remaining No 5 blast furnace underwent a major reline in 2009.  The immediate impact of the closure will be a halving of iron production; and correspondingly of downstream steel manufacture. BlueScope will also close the aging strip-rolling facility at Western Port in Victoria, originally designed to meet the automotive demand in Victoria and South Australia.

800 jobs will go at Port Kembla, 200 at Western Port and another 400 from local contractors.  The other Australian steelmaker OneSteel has also recently announced a workforce reduction of 400 jobs.

This announcement has reignited the 20th Century free trade versus protectionist economic and political debate. Labor backbenchers and the Greens want a Parliamentary enquiry. The Prime Minister (Julia Gillard) reportedly initially agreed, then, perhaps smelling trouble, demurred. No doubt 'Sir Humphrey' lurks not far back in the shadows. 

 

 

So what has and hasn't changed (disregarding a world pandemic presently raging)?

 

Read more: Manufacturing in Australia

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