Social Science Dimensions
  • Home
  • Services
    • Impact Assessment, Monitoring and Evaluation, and Social Research
    • Land Research and Policy
    • Justice and Dispute Resolution
    • Political Economy Analysis
    • Governance, Policy Development, and Sustainable Public Administration
    • Sustainability and Natural Resource Governance
    • Rural Development
    • Project Design and Proposal Development
    • Health
  • Portfolio
    • Portfolio Standard
    • Portfolio Mobile
  • Approaches
    • Survey Design
    • Data Management
  • Blog
    • Chronological Blog
  • Contact
  • Resources / Library

By the Dawn's Early Light

20/1/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Graham Ring
​Donald Trump has just been inaugurated as the President of the United States of America. This man who has no military or public service background is now the leader of the free world.  He will sit in the round room in the White House for the next four years and make decisions that will have far-reaching implications for the future of the planet.

As a candidate, he presented very much as an ‘outsider’ - a business man who was not of the Washington professional political class. In fact he was disdainful of ‘beltway insiders’ and said that upon taking office he would ‘drain the swamp’  - identifying and dismissing bureaucratic hacks ill- equipped to take America in a new direction. 

Voting in America – and most other parts of the world – is not compulsory. This means that opinion polls and predictions are even less reliable than they are in Australia. In a stunning election result, Trump failed to win the popular vote, but nevertheless garnered enough Electoral College votes to become President.

His campaigning style was one of broad themes, rather than specific policy undertakings. He tapped into a feeling, justified or not, of disaffection with the whole political machine, particularly amongst older white males. His defeated opponent, Hillary Clinton, was the archetypal Washington insider who Trump portrayed as representing everything that was wrong with a moribund political system.  It is widely agreed that his win was significantly the result of the same kind of ‘protest vote’ that saw the remarkable ‘Brexit result in the UK, and the re-emergence of Pauline Hansen as a force on the Australian political scene

The promises and prescriptions Trump offered on the campaign trail were many and varied, but rarely cohesive or well grounded.  At various times he has undertaken to:
  • build a wall with Mexico
  • reduce company tax
  • increase the strength of the military
  • adopt more isolationist foreign policy positions
  • wind back US involvement in free trade agreements
  • stop American-based companies decamping to countries where production costs are lower,
  • embark on a program of huge public infrastructure spending which will cause serious shortness of breath amongst Republican deficit hawks in congress.

Most of all, Trump has said he will ‘Make America Great Again’, - though it seems that when the rubber hits the road the policy prescriptions that will bring this laudable sentiment to fruition are more than a little subjective.

His willingness during the campaign, and subsequently as president-elect, to use Twitter to make his views known has caused more than a little consternation across the nation and around the world.
 
On more than one occasion, Trump has been goaded into intemperate spleen-venting responses on social media after personal attacks. This knee-jerk behaviour calls into question his suitability to conduct international diplomacy at the highest levels.

Picking an untried recruit in a national sporting team in the hope of a narrative of redemption and triumph is intoxicating. Picking an untried recruit to be President of the United States is rather more sobering.

​Who needs Twitter when you’ve got the launch codes?

Graham Ring is a Darwin based writer and journalist.

0 Comments

Services of the Italian Fashion Industry to the History of British Manufacturing

13/1/2017

5 Comments

 
Picture
Rod Nixon
​Congratulations to the Malenotti fashion empire for their services to the history of British manufacturing. In an impressive feat of historical research, the Malenotti dynasty has discovered that the long-defunct British motorcycle manufacturer ‘Matchless’, whose brand they purchased in 2012, was already in the business of producing protective motorcycle clothing in the 1920s. As the born-again ‘Matchless London’ firm states in the ‘Heritage’ section of its website:

'Thanks to the foresight of its enterpreneurs, Matchless was the first motorcycle company to work on rider safety, creating a department of studies where clothing was designed to protect the motorcyclist (clothing was then tested by the best riders of the time).'[1] 
 

This impressive piece of historical research has astonished a number of enthusiasts of the old bikes, who had never previously heard of the endeavours of Matchless in this area, let alone laid their eyes upon any Matchless motorcycle clothing dating from the 1920s or 1930s. Similarly the new historical findings have surprised those interested in the history of motorcycle protective clothing, who’d previously been focused on things like the helmet, in the apparently mistaken belief that it was more important to safety than fashionable leather attire.
 
One of those most surprised by the new historical findings is author Bill Cakebread. Bill worked at the Associated Motor Cycles (AMC) factory that produced Matchless bikes, and has written books on the history of Matchless motorcycles and the Collier family that originally owned Matchless and AMC. Based on research to inform his new book The Matchless Colliers, Bill has had ‘direct contact with the descendants of the Collier family and access to their family archives’. Based on his research, Bill reports '...no record or memory of such clothing whatsoever...'[2] and observes that:


'It is strange that not one member of the Collier family nor any former employee has any knowledge of the Company's involvement in the manufacture, design or promotion of clothing of any kind.  What is known of the protective clothing that they did use, e.g. crash helmets, was that it [was] bought in from outside suppliers.'[3]
 

Similarly, neither the Staffordshire-based Vintage Motor Cycle Club[4] (VMCC) nor the UK National Motorcycle Museum[5] have any records of Matchless motorcycle clothing catalogues in their archives.
 
Obviously, this makes the historical research undertaken by the new owners of the Matchless brand, for uncovering what no one else knew existed, all the more ground-breaking. The ‘Heritage’ section of the Matchless London website (cited above) even includes electronic examples of the extremely rare motorcycle clothing catalogues, dated 1927 and 1928, along with the information that ‘During the same period, Matchless developed a deep know-how of leather clothing, with specialities in clothing for motocycle [sic] racing’. Admittedly from here, the catalogues posted on the website look like nonsensical mock-ups, featuring random photographs (some from decades later) and including no details of actual items for sale or prices. In these parts, though, the ants and cockroaches often get into the electrics, so this could be the problem. 
Picture
You might think the rarity of material and archival evidence supporting the claim to a protective clothing department at Matchless in the 1920s would have caused commentators to pause before elevating the claims of a fashion house to the realm of historical fact. Perhaps, for example, skeptical commentators might have cynically suspected that Matchless London was just inventing some tradition and authenticity that would help them sell overpriced clothing to impressionable, cashed-up fashion victims in places like London and Milan?

Fortunately for British industrial history, no such over-zealous fact-checking has waylaid commentators from the process of setting the record straight. And indeed, why go through the tedious process of visiting a boring, dimly lit, silverfish infested archive (in which you won’t even find the catalogue you’re after) when you can rely on such an august source as the ‘Heritage’ section of a fashion website?
 
Consequently, owing to such modern and efficient data verification approaches, the revised history of Matchless as an early manufacturer of motorcycle protective clothing has already been endorsed, confirmed and enshrined across a range of sources ranging from online motorcycling[6] and fashion[7] sites to a Routledge publication on ‘Sport in History’.[8]
 
Full marks to the Malenotti history team for achieving public recognition of the glorious sartorial truth about the hallowed Matchless brand, in the face of such a scarcity of evidence. 

                                                                                                                       
Notes
[1] Sighted 6 January 2017 at http://www.matchlesslondon.com/en/heritage/
[2] Email correspondence from Bill Cakebread dated 21 December 2016.
[3] Email correspondence from Bill Cakebread dated 12 January 2017.
[4] Email Correspondence from VMCC dated 14 December 2016.
[5] Email Correspondence from the UK National Motorcycle Museum dated 12 December 2016.
[6] See, for example (1) ‘Matchless sunglasses: “Only £299”’, Classic Bike News, July 2015. Sighted 10 January 2017 at http://www.sumpmagazine.com/classicbikenews/classic-bike-news-july-2015.htm and (2) Richard Newland, ‘Matchless is Back’, MCN / Motorcycle News, 8 September 2014. Sighted 10 January 2017 at http://www.motorcyclenews.com/news/new-bikes/2014/september/matchless-is-back/
[7] See, for example Shane C. Kurup, ‘Matchless Motorcycle Clothing’, Fashionbeans, 15 April 2013. Sighted 10 January 2017 at http://www.fashionbeans.com/2013/matchless-motorcycle-clothing/
[8] Jean Williams (2015), ‘Kit: fashioning the Sporting Body – Introduction to the Special Edition’, Sport in History [Routledge], 35:1, 1-18. Sighted 8 December 2016 at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17460263.2014.946956
5 Comments

​Disaffection is the New Black

10/1/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Graham Ring
A turbulent 2016 saw Britain vote to Brexit, and a clutch of their European neighbours veer to the political right. In the US, a man with no experience in the military or the public service is about to become leader of the free world for the next four years. 

In Australia, a double dissolution election meant that senate seats could be won for half the usual number of votes. Voters returned a ragtag bunch of minor parties, along with a bewildering bunch of independents including David Leyonhjelm, Derryn Hinch and Jacqui Lambie. 

Our much vaunted system of democratic election, means that this result is, by definition, legitimate.  The People Have Spoken, and The Voters Are Never Wrong.  That said, it’s worth musing about just why the voters made these decisions.

At a superficial level, the answer to this question has been shouted from the rooftops: The electorate is disaffected.  But what does this mean? 

Australia has enjoyed many consecutive years of economic growth. And our material standard of living is higher than it has ever been, even if the distribution of this wealth is uneven. So why the backlash?

Anyhow, the ‘disaffection’ we vented at the ballot box has seen a bunch of randoms installed in the Senate. Just how this will improve things is not entirely clear. What is apparent is that the government’s legislative agenda will grind to a halt, since nothing can get through the upper house without protracted horse-trading with these liquorice all-sorts.

Our system does not require voters to be informed, only to cast a ballot for a candidate of their choice. Even if it’s Pauline. This is widely believed to be a good thing.

​Specific policy detail from the minor parties and the independents was very thin on the ground during the campaign, but that didn’t seem to matter. We voted for them anyway. Apparently we wanted to ‘shake things up’. Now we wait in trepidation for our monster to mature.

​Perhaps next time we should invite candidates to make clear and specific promises about what they intend to do if they win office. Then we can make an informed choice based on this information. Or not.

​In any case, allowing politicians to let rhetoric masquerade as policy does not serve us well. 

Graham Ring is a Darwin based writer and journalist.

0 Comments

    Archives

    October 2022
    September 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    May 2019
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    October 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    March 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    January 2014
    September 2013
    November 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    February 2012

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.