Romney vs. Obama. It was a question of realism against the idealism. Moral good vs. evil? I’d heard it described as that. It was a debate that raged on and on until the results were declared, questioned (mainly by Karl Rove), re-counted and re-counted again. Mitt Romney was the business savvy, rich Republican who focused heavily on kick-starting America and reuniting under a banner of singularity. Barack Obama is the great defender, the orator, the charmer who will restore American employment and the economy. Are both men able to lead? Personally I’d suggest either could (perhaps a question of followers rather than leading?) – Barack has done relatively well in exceptional circumstances and a restrictive Congress. Mitt has partially unified the divided Republican Party back together into a patchwork, a mesh of different ideologies and beliefs with the sole aim of removing Obama as President. Should either have continued to be/become President? Probably not. Is the ‘house’ divided once more? Probably yes.

Romney as President was not the doomsday scenario that was portrayed to be, but I’d hasten to add it’s certainly not the answer either. Put simply, the Republican Party continues to fail at learning the lessons from the failed Bush administration, and neither has it been rehabilitated enough to govern again. Romney was chosen in the primaries not for his successes but more for his rivals’ failings. The primaries were an exercise in poor choice and leadership, combined with some of the most bizarre nominations in the parties’ recent history. A hard fought race with a capable candidate would have given Americans real food for thought, instead of laughing at Romney’s ‘binders of women’. Did Mitt make a case for the youth or minority vote? There’s an assumption that this demographic was 100% behind the Democrats but that’s a stereotype. As proven, a large percentage chose Obama, but that didn’t have to happen if Romney had actually campaigned and put forth some policies that catered to their needs. Put simply, questions can and should be raised as to whether right leaning people voted for the Republicans as an endorsement of their candidate, as they had no other choice, or simply to make a stand against the incumbent. Running a platform that initially sought only to repeal legislation passed in the previous term is unfavourable at best and ridiculous at worst, and I predict another period of deep soul-searching for the Republicans until next election. We should note that there are positives to this result though:-
After all it was a much closer race than initially anticipated (i.e. from the acceptance of Romney as candidate onwards). Opinion polls claimed it would be a close race but it varied after the debates. Statistical data as of the 9^th Nov suggest that Mitt only lost the popular vote by around three million votes – hardly a sweep from the Dems. Secondly, the groundwork for a concerted tilt at 2016 is in place – continuing control of the House ensures that Obama simply must cross party lines to pass anything noteworthy, which is something he really failed to do the four years previous. PR wise the party will go one of two ways. It’s control of the floating voters that they need, so they can either continue with their blockade of Democrat legislation, then run a campaign based on how their opposition (as in the Democrats, not their opposition OF the Democrats) allowed America to stagnate – or they can work alongside, then should the outlook appear brighter for America domestically they can claim credit.

Obama has work to do if he wants to leave a positive legacy behind. There’s no denying that Obama the man is a polished article, an orator and an idealist. Obama the politician is unrefined and stubborn. Not always a bad thing, but from the outside looking in this has proven troublesome, especially when it comes to the debt ceiling issue. His party has a second chance and four more years to improve recovery, and increase GDP growth at a quicker rate. It’s a tall order, but should he be more conciliatory without sacrificing party principle, conceding where necessary but maintaining a firm line (not resorting to the veto as often) then he could be viewed as a success, and not just among the more liberal-leaning Americans. The debt ceiling is his real acid test. Shaving half a trillion dollars in seven weeks? That will be viewed globally with great interest, especially amongst Europeans and the G20.

Whilst I encourage feedback on my thoughts, this is a potential hotbed so should any conversation arise please be civil. We all have our own views and ideas and speech is free. All I ask is mutual respect. For what it’s worth I don’t favour either party – All I would like to see is a strong America, and a sustainable global recovery.

The best part about having any extended free time is that after the initial boredom and frustration has passed, you find that your intellectual senses become less dulled. I find that I am often taken with a urge to research and write more, not always when you might expect it. It can be as I'm trying to sleep at 3 in the morning. I can be playing a videogame and then I want to fire up JSTOR. Usually it can take the form of a trigger phrase on a TV programme that forms a link of research - anything from the news to stand-up comedy. It's wide and varying.

First and foremost I'm a historian. I love my area, and I still get a kick out of being published in university press. It flatters my ego to know I get quoted and used as source material in (extremely limited and specific) circumstances! I'm only human, and I dare-say there's plenty of people in the same boat as I am. Being a historian desensitises you to an extent, however. The Jewish Holocaust, the Balkan and Rwandan Genocides, the September 11 attacks - all horrific, all atrocities and yet I have to look at them with emotionless eyes. A historian who is worth their salt will emphasise a balanced viewpoint over anything else. They give the facts and can give their opinion but it has to be based on valid hypothesis and has to be justified with documentary evidence. That's why the best historians out there, aren't well known. The more obscure, usually the better they are. There's nothing wrong with Simon Schama, or David Starkey, don't get me wrong. Just sticking your nose in a book is better. And by and large, the ones whom don’t give their two cents are more informative than those that do, because personal bias tends to cloud fact-based conclusions.

Historians by and large are studious. They become engrossed in whatever they are reading/studying and very little else matters, if they’re dedicated to their craft. They will obsess with research and snatch every last detail. They will read, and then read over the next day. I’m very much an auditory and visual learner; kinaesthetic learning doesn’t really apply unless you go to archaeological or more practical fields. I’m very much the ‘bookish nerd’. The explosion of the Internet also revolutionised the way I study/studied because it was less questioning the motive of the writer, more the quality of the writing to begin with. Wikipedia anyone? There’s actually a great deal of factual information on there, and it takes a keen eye to separate the wheat from the chaff.

History is time consuming though. It takes hours to sift through material even if you skim, and preparing any large scale piece of writing takes vast preparation. I’ve been taught to teach that for every hour of actual writing you get on that piece of paper, at least six hours of research should have gone into it. It’s not a field where you can make stuff up and get away with it – if it’s false, you’d know. For instance I remember one assignment I marked where one of the students claimed Adolf Hitler started WWI. Blatantly wrong. Then you get more subtle errors – misquoted sources, misinterpretation of factual evidence. It’s sad to see but then it’s too intensive not to see the odd mistake. I’m not punitive when it comes to that.

I think I’m writing this because I’m just glad my creativity in the academic arts has been restored somewhat. I don’t feel as if I’m treading water, and I struggle to actually get down everything I’m thinking these days. It’s a good place to be in, mentally.

I'm not going to go into extensive detail about myself in this blog. It was never the intention, being somewhat of an impersonal attempt at examining things I had been looking at in detail and then maybe discussing it further with members of the site. This post won't subscribe to this completely but I am curious to hear your opinions on the matter I suppose. This will be more journalistic than educational but I hope it might teach a few things and might even be interesting!

I arrived in Australia on the 3rd of March 2012, at Brisbane International. The time was 8.15 at night, and I'd been travelling on/off for the previous 28 hours. I don't sleep on flights so I really struggled with the 10 different time zones I'd passed, and was thoroughly exhausted by the end of it. Also, when I left Manchester it was in negative temperatures: my first stopover in Munich was double figures, Singapore was a warm 25 with 100% humidity and Brisbane as I recall was a sticky 30 with the same.. so all in all I couldn't really take much of it in. I remember that flying in, we took about half an hour and made a very slow approach so I did get to see the skyline at night which I enjoyed. It's a modern city for a rapidly modernising urban population, and the architecture shows. But by the time we'd taxied and I'd got my luggage, I needed to crash out before I burned out. I needed to shower, and to sleep. Now I believe it's true what they say about jet-lag only really affecting you when you fly the other way around the world but I defy anyone to travel that length of time, with very little body movement and not feel the same.

I didn't take long to settle in. If I have one aspect of my character that I am proud of, it's my ability to adapt to vastly different situations relatively easy. I have many many flaws as I'm sure we all do, but that is something I really like about myself. The main reason is, I just don't take whatever is happening all that seriously. I just tell myself it's a bit surreal, it'll take some getting used to and then it'll be fine and almost every time it is. And that's pretty much exactly how it happened, I took it in one day at a time. I went from living in an English terraced suburb to an detached eight acres of Australian bushland. I went from having a corner shop at the end of my street, to the nearest petrol station being close to 10 kilometres away. I adjusted in a couple of weeks.

But I have to say that it's been only recently that I've really explored my local surroundings in any great depth. I've been to the city (Brisbane), throughout Ipswich (where I and Nikki live) and even took a sojourn to Melbourne in June, and yet I've only been further into Queensland in the last couple of months and not often. Today was one of those days, and I wanted to write about it. To start with, I need to tell you about the weather - it sounds weird but it's partly the reason why I felt I had to jot all this down. Over the last few months, South-East Queensland has had a varying weather pattern - following the normal for the differing times in year and season but only vaguely. The weather was following a pattern they call El Nino up until a couple of years ago and it seems the conditions we've had this year show a re-emergence. Recently, coming out from Winter to Spring we had one of the driest periods on record. June-July were uncommonly wet, but from July 19th onwards until about mid September Brisbane CBD and Airport received less than 0.2mm of rainfall for the entire period. Today was completely different. Today we stormed, and we rained. It fitted in quite well with the sobriety of how I felt when I drove around today.

I've been looking for rural work to extend my stay here, without the necessity of a partner visa. Myself and Cilla are happy and we want to be married soon enough but to do it for visa reasons seem.. to devalue it somewhat. It's not why we want to marry - we love each other and marriage should be about love. So an easy route is to extend to a second year working holiday visa, and as I'm already living at her address I can commute with a second car. It's just I've been struggling to find work locally - and when I say locally I mean within 75km. The work I need is very specific and I can't afford to make mistakes with the work I get as I don't get second chances. Therefore I've been driving around, checking farms, stables and fruit picking opportunities. The search has been and forgive the pun - fruitless. Either the jobs are far too far away, or they're not able to hire me temporarily which is a visa condition. Nevertheless I remain chipper and I'll keep looking, moving if I have to. Today was something else though. I had a real experience, one I can't really put into too much detail - other than I really felt that I learnt what it felt like to be in the rural heartland. I set out from Ipswich to Boonah, which is about 40km away. Luckily it's all one straight road and not a slow one so you can pretty much look all around as you drive. The view is farmland and mountains as far as the eye can see and as the landscape is fairly flat you can see for miles. Spring is coming in so there's plenty of vegetation and fresh grass, despite the adverse conditions. Lightning and thunder were an unexpected accompaniment on this journey, instead of the baking sun I'm used to.

Often I've just driven the road, and not really looked at the farms much there. They're mostly privately owned, small family businesses that can't really afford much of anything, even less another man to feed and pay. But as I've said, today was different. I paid a visit to a couple of them, not for work but more for information - passing down the community grapevine. I spoke to a elderly farmer who had a couple of acres and a lettuce plantation. He was gruff but friendly, and told me that while work was scarce, to keep my chin up as this was prime season for backpackers and pickers. There was a sadness about him though, and something told me that I had to press the issue a bit further though which was strange now I think about it, because I never intended to ask this guy for a job in the first place. What transpired next is the trigger.

We sat down, and looked out across the farm. His house was at the back of it, and at the top of his acreage was the Ipswich-Boonah road and we watched the traffic go past. He asked me where I'd come from, what I was planning. He could tell I only wanted to work rurally to stay, and I was worried that a lifetime farmer might be offended by this but he simply laughed. Then I asked him the same. He gave me the impression that he really needed to talk and I had nothing better to do so I listened. He offered me a drink and we watched the storm over the farm to the east of the road. He told me he used to own that farm. 16 acres. He had downsized only within the last 18 months or so. The rational reasoning would be age, and with only his son to help him he needed the smaller area.. But having been here for a while and knowing the recent history of Brisbane I knew otherwise. In January 2011, SE QLD had some of the worst flooding in memory. I'm sure Nikki could go into better detail than I ever could but the damage was incredible, and cost $billions. Houses, streets, even whole suburbs were basically underwater. Those that had no property insurance petitioned the government and got a smaller payout with it being a natural disaster (from what I've been told anyway) and those that had insurance claimed on it. But financial damage aside, sentimental damages hurt just as deep if not deeper. I asked the farmer if that was the reason he had to cut back, and he seemed surprised but nodded. He had lost tens of thousands of dollars - he couldn't afford insurance to cover the entirety of the property so they'd gave him what he could claim for and he sold the land. Fertile, it fetched a few dollars. But even with that, and the small money he made from the land he still had, he was living on a modest sum. The house was rusted to the roof without looking dilapidated, but you could tell that this meant little. Sentimentality is everything.

I asked him whether it was just the flooding, but again I figured I knew the answer to that one too - Australia is in the midst of a mining boom (albeit one that is steadily slowing) and most of the able-bodied young single men, those that would normally be farmhands have moved out to Western Australia to work in the mines. They pay handsomely for the ones that find work, and there's a labour shortfall in some areas as a result. You would think that would play into my hands, but with less interest in agriculture for GDP there's little investment and most farms just cut back - those that aren't private that is. One side expands, while the other side shrinks. He told me the people he hired would work on the other land, so he had no need as he didn't cultivate it anymore. A wry smile crept across his face then, unsure of the reason I asked what was up. He told me that he'd lost a lot of his business, a lot of his possessions and a lot of his personal income - and he told me that he still had his house, his son, and something to hand over to him when he retired. I thanked him for his time and got back on the road. I left him feeling sad on one side, but oddly happy. This fellow has had a horrible year or two and yet still manages to see positives. He was a archetypal Aussie.

I got to Boonah and decided to head to Beaudesert, about another 35 kms outside to the south. Same views, same rust covered houses, same stories. I put my details on noticeboards, and ask around the towns. From there I went to Laravale, and through to Rathdowney. From there, I drove back through Boonah and back home to Ebenezer. All in all a total of 225km in three hours or so. I rode out the storm, and as darkness set in the storm passed. And the storm in my head passed too. I'd been feeling down about how I was struggling to find work but then good honest people have lost millions, but they don't complain. They carry on, and they continue to get up at the crack of dawn to plough their fields and reap their crops. They just get on with it. I should too. Sorry for the long windedness.

You might think this is a fairly morbid way to start proceedings and I suppose you'd be right but I've always had a weird fascination with aviation incidents/crashes. I am no frequent flyer nor am I a fearful one but the fact remains that the modern plane is both a marvellous piece of engineering genius, and a dangerous piece of machinery when mistreated or not maintained correctly. I've spent maybe hundreds of hours online and researching documentary evidence to try to understand when something goes wrong, why it goes wrong. Human error, improper maintenance, autopilot malfunction.. these are usually the main attributes to an incident.

But let me stress - the chance of an any-scale emergency in a commercial flight is incredibly remote. Ignore the 1:11m that you read because this equation is not only false, but works off some very outdated statistics. Basically commercial airliners have more stringent safety guidelines to follow year upon year and especially those that focus on metal fatigue and long haul flights. It's true that an incident is more likely on a long haul than short, but the odds are still over 1 in 9 million, especially as this takes into account even minor incidents such as localized decompression. Factually speaking, fatalistic incidents are dropping at a steady rate and have been since 1989 - sadly not taking into account the four planes that were hijacked in 2001 but then those are considered in a special category.

The prevailing pattern that emerges on airlines that do have poor safety and crash records is that they are usually cheaper budget carriers. It's not a myth. But I'm not talking about Ryanair or EasyJet or JetStar etc. I'm referring to usually Arabic or African budget airlines. For example, of the seven incidents that have occurred this year, only one happened in Europe. It's estimated that worldwide there's approximately anywhere from 12 to 14 million flights a year, so using that data we can assume that there has been roughly 9-10 million already. That's about one in a million and the planes involved had no mechanical issues aside from Bhoja Air Flight 213 which had been declared not airworthy to begin with. If it seems high then bear in mind that in Europe and the USA, the odds decrease significantly. The one incident this year was in Russia, where plane safety has been under scrutiny with a number of mechanical failures and crashes over the last few years to begin with.

What I've learned from reading into the worst crashes (and by that I mean fatalistic) is that it takes extreme circumstances to floor a plane and human error is almost always some part of the incident. The three worst air disasters by death toll were in Tenerife in 1977 when two planes collided on the runway, a Japan Airlines flight in 1985 where improper maintenance on a bulkhead resulted in a rapid decompression and destabilization of the plane coupled with the loss of the vertical stabilizer, and a midair collision between an Indian and Kazakhstan aircraft in 1996. All were avoidable.

All told though, air travel is astonishingly safe. Just don't skimp on the cost of your ticket unless it's a short trip!