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Monday, May 31, 2010

Rudd's coercive taxation of immobile assets

When it comes to the proposed resource super profits tax, the Rudd government is once more failing to practise what it preaches.

The Australian government, the US, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are key supporters of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a Norway-based global standard established to promote minerals revenue transparency among emerging economies.

The initiative's website quotes from a UN survey of the top 10 criteria used to determine the viability of any mining investment. These include consistency of minerals policies, ability to predetermine tax liability and stability of a tax regime. You'd have to say the Rudd government misses out on all three.

Rudd may think he has the mining companies over a barrel because their Australian resource locations are immobile and they can't exploit an ore deposit here by mining in another country. But multi-nationals can exploit high-grade deposits in other countries with lower taxes and surmountable hurdles such as in transport and political instability.

Policymakers should query statements that are true but trite.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Foster & Allen

They are coming to the Batemans Bay Soldiers Club on the 2nd of June and we, being Foster & Allen fans from way back, will be there!

Mick Foster and Tony Allen have been performing together for almost 30 years. They first toured Australia in 1983 and this will be their 16th trip down under. These charismatic singers have been performing their unique blend of easy listening and folk music and their popularity is proven with their record sale. Between them they have sold 18 million records, making them one of Ireland's biggest entertainment exports.

They are giving concerts EVERY night during their one-month tour of Australia, going from Ipswich, Nambour, the Gold Coast, Brisbane, and Toowoomba in Queensland, to Ballina, Grafton, Taree, Newcastle, Rooty Hill, Revesby, Wollongong, and Batemans Bay in New South Wales, and Canberra, Wodonga, Bendigo, Shepparton, Ballarat, Horsham, Warrnambool, Geelong, Frankston, Morwell, Melbourne, and Castlemaine in Victoria, before hopping across Bass Strait to Launceston, Burnie, and Hobart, and then on to Adelaide, and Mandurah and Perth in Western Australia. My guess is they'll be sounding pretty croaky by the time they get to Perth!




From the WALL STREET JOURNAL FORUM:



Here's an article from the Wall Street Journal Forum by Eddie Sessions. Have they finally got him figured out or is this all part of American politics?



"I have this theory about Barack Obama. I think he's led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House.

In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry. Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? "Dreams of My Father" was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old. The "Audacity of Hope" followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself. There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself a "communist with a small 'c'" was the real author.

His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial. He went from a legislator in the Illinois legislature to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley's formidable political machine at his disposal.

He was in the U.S. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital. How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before?

He outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries. He took Iowa by storm. A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed "cool" in a place where agriculture was the antithesis of cool. He dazzled the locals. And he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance.

And then he had the great good fortune of having the Republicans select one of the most inept candidates for the presidency since Bob Dole. And then John McCain did something crazy. He picked Sarah Palin, an unknown female governor from the very distant state ofAlaska . It was a ticket that was reminiscent of 1984's Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro and they went down to defeat.

The mainstream political media fell in love with him. It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man. The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary.

Now, nearly a full year into his first term, all of those gilded years leading up to the White House have left him unprepared to be President. Left to his own instincts, he has a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It swiftly became a joke that he could not deliver even the briefest of statements without the ever-present Tele-Prompters.

Far worse, however, is his capacity to want to "wish away" some terrible realities, not the least of which is the Islamist intention to destroy America and enslave the West. Any student of history knows how swiftly Islam initially spread. It knocked on the doors of Europe, having gained a foothold in Spain .

The great crowds that greeted him at home or on his campaign "world tour" were no substitute for having even the slightest grasp of history and the reality of a world filled with really bad people with really bad intentions.

Oddly and perhaps even inevitably, his political experience, a cakewalk, has positioned him to destroy the Democrat Party's hold on power in Congress because in the end it was never about the Party. It was always about his communist ideology, learned at an early age from family, mentors, college professors, and extreme leftist friends and colleagues.

Obama is a man who could deliver a snap judgment about a Boston police officer who arrested an "obstreperous" Harvard professor-friend, but would warn Americans against "jumping to conclusions" about a mass murderer at Fort Hood who shouted "Allahu Akbar." The absurdity of that was lost on no one. He has since compounded this by calling the Christmas bomber "an isolated extremist" only to have to admit a day or two later that he was part of an al Qaeda plot.

He is a man who could strive to close down our detention facility at Guantanamo even though those released were known to have returned to the battlefield against America . He could even instruct his Attorney General to afford the perpetrator of 9/11 a civil trial when no one else would ever even consider such an obscenity. And he is a man who could wait three days before having anything to say about the perpetrator of yet another terrorist attack on Americans and then have to elaborate on his remarks the following day because his first statement was so lame.

The pattern repeats itself. He either blames any problem on the Bush administration or he naively seeks to wish away the truth.

Knock, knock. Anyone home? Anyone there? Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual's life.

When anyone else would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man has spent over a million dollars to deny access to his. Most other documents, the paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review. He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden.

We laugh at the ventriloquist's dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States of America ?"


Our beautiful shire


The Eurobodalla Shire Council was formed in 1913 with the responsibility for administering local government functions along 110 kilometres of the NSW coast between Durras and Wallaga Lake. The Council administers only about 30% of the area of the Shire as the remaining 70% is non-rateable crown land held as national park and state forest: 40% of the shire is national park, 30% is state forest, 20% is productive farmland and 10% is urban settlement.

The Shire is unusual in that nearly half of ratepayers are non-residents. Just over 17% of ratepayers are residents of Canberra. Although the permanent population is around 34,100, the visiting population (who stay more than 3 nights) is 3.1 million per year.

The Council's management lost millions through its investments in derivatives on top of all the other inefficiencies endemic in all forms of government. Now they want the local ratepayers to pay for their stupidities through a huge increase in rates.

A group of local people got together to hold the Council accountable. I heard them on the lccal radio and thought I'd give them a bit of moral support by phoning in to say "Goodonya" - and was promptly roped in to do their website.

So I got busy and registered what I hope is a catchy domain name - www.letushaveoursay.org - and designed several webpages. A few days of typing and it's all done! Here it is!

P.S. They also tried to sign me up for their Management Committee but I don't want to get involved in grubby politics, be it local, state, or federal.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

The Ministry of Hot Air


The plush new headquarters of the
Department of Climate Change in Canberra


No climate staff to be axed despite the department having been scrapped. Taxpayers will pay $90 million a year to keep 408 public servants employed in the Federal Climate Change Department - despite most of them now having nothing to do until 2013.

Yin ton, yin ton, yin ton, yin ton ... No, this is not the Goon Show - these are REAL people who pretend to be running our country!

More than 60 of them are classified as senior executive staff on salaries between $168,000 and $298,000 a year. Their salary bill alone will cost an estimated $12 million every year. A further $8 million will also be paid in rent for plush offices at Canberra's Constitution Place until 2012, where it is believed 500 new computers will be delivered this week. Despite Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's decision on Tuesday to suspend the failed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme until at least 2013, the department has ruled out plans to cut back staff.

A formal response by department secretary Martin Parkinson to a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday - the same day as the scheme's suspension - claimed the department would not offer redundancies.

The formal response, obtained by The Daily Telegraph, said there were no plans for "the immediate future" of any scaling back of staff.

According to official figures, the number of top-paid bureaucrats being paid up to $298,000 a year has almost doubled since January this year from 39 to 61. That was to gear up for establishment of the Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority, which will also now have no function.

Since last year with climate change employees having risen from an initial 246 to 408. Of the 61 senior agency officials, only nine have been inherited from the scrapped home insulation scheme. The majority, 38, were employed on the CPRS and a further 19 were employed on the renewable energy scheme which has also been axed.

But none of the 408 staff within the department will be shed even though the department's key function, the CPRS, has been axed.

Its own tender documents reveal a lease contract of $16 million for its offices which expires in 2012.

The Ministry of Air? How are you off for air? They're just full of it.

If this has left you choking, be cheered up by this reply from a public servant to the Daily Telegraph, "You should be thankful that you have something to do. To be employed and not have anything to do is not enjoyable. I should know as I have been a public servant for twenty years." I guess we ought to pay them an extra hardship allowance for having nothing to do!

The lucky country? Yin ton, yin ton, yin ton, yin ton ... Well, for some!



P.S. Perhaps the Ministry of Hot Air could sublet part of its premises to the Ministry of Silly Walks. Birds of a feather and all that!


Sunday, May 23, 2010

This movie will make you very, very angry ...



... and kill your appetite for the rest of the day.

How much do we really know about the food we buy at our local supermarkets and serve to our families?

You are what you eat. It is a simple expression that bears scary implications as you watch the movie Food, Inc. Director Robert Kenner draws upon the searing reportage of authors Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) to explore how modern developments in food production pose grave risks to our health and environment. These writers aren’t radicals or even vegetarians (Schlosser admits that his favourite meal is a hamburger and fries), but they are crusaders when it comes to exposing problems and naming offenders. There are stories of heartbreak and outrage, but the film carefully channels these emotions towards opportunities for activism.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Autumn at Riverbend


Sitting under a tree in the autumn sun and reading a chapter in my biography "A Burnt-Out Case", written for me by Graham Greene.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Monday, May 17, 2010

The once-in-a-hundred-year clean-up


It's happening: the always-postponed workshop clean-up!

I might as well concentrate on the minutie of life as the 'big picture' of the big bad world outside the gate is far from good. And it's amazing the things I find; things I had given up as lost years ago!

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Neck exercises

Click on image to enlarge and start exercising


Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Journey's End?

Click on image for a BEFORE picture

Our Austrian friend Rob Krenn whom we first met in Moroya in 2003 and who for the last fifteen-or-so years has bicycled all over the world, missing perhaps no more than a handful of countries, seems to have become saddle-sore!

He's just emailed us this photo of himself in suit and tie, working as a check-in agent for AHS at a German airport.

The Island of Desire

Read Robert Dean Frisbie's "The Island of Desire" online


While in town today, I found in a second-hand shop a somewhat dog-eared copy of T.L. Richards' "White Man, Brown Woman - The Life Story of a Trader in the South Seas". Just reading the foreword had me captivated:

"Even as I write, my comely dark-eyed Tahitian woman fishes off the reef, and my three half-caste children play on the white sand of the beach, naked as the day they were born, and I am happy, for my earthly desires are few. I love all that is beautiful, and all around me are the charms of Tahiti, "Isle of Dreams." One day I will be buried in this foreign land that has adopted me as one of its own children.

The South Sea Island trader has always been described as an arrant scoundrel. Let me say that no one who has been in the Islands for any length of time would make such a misleading and ridiculous assertion. The Island trader is, generally speaking, a man who has been disappointed with civilisation. He has come Islandwards, seeking sympathy in the song of the surf, and finding everything to his liking has lived on, in the eternal summer of the tropic seas.

Today, in their cool homes, on the many islands of the South Sea, they live, and are as happy as I. They, too, have their women and children and are far more contented with their lot than men who sit in office chairs engrossed in the questionable honesty of business.

It is said that the Islands break men's spirits. More often it is a case of "where the spirit is weak, the flesh is willing," and the men who come Islandwards to indulge in an orgy of drink and debauchery with native women mostly are responsible for the thousands of unwanted little half-caste waifs who roam the small towns and beaches. These men are merely vultures who prey upon the simple native races.

Happy as I am, I sometimes long for the companionship of a woman of my own race. But I realise that I have lived a life beyond the pale, and my experiment in endeavouring to hold a while woman's love was a ghastly failure.

Sheer force of circumstance has made me take a native woman for a companion. But once I endeavoured to play the game. Now I am a human derelict, who has made an unholy mess of life. The least I can do is to stay by the woman who has mothered my children, and who adores me as only an Island woman can."


The evocative prose took me right back to my own years spent in the islands:

"From my bedroom I could see the lagoon through the coconut groves and the stars hung low over the reef. Far out on the peaceful waters two native fishermen sang a plaintive Island melody to the accompaniment of the soft murmur of the reef. Then a change in the wind drowned their voices in the thunder of great rollers. The wind died away again, the song of the surf came to me as a soft whisper, and I slept."


It has stories in it about real life encounters with Buly Hayes, Graf von Luckner's Seeadler, the legendary Captain Andy Thompson, and a landfall on Suwarrow which is far more descriptive than anything in Tom Neals's book:

"Suwarrow was uninhabited, for the reason that no natives would live there for any time as it had a gruesome history, and was supposed to be haunted by evil spirits of murdered people. It was thickly populated by many varieties of tropical seabirds. A labour gang stayed there for five months in the year and then returned to Manahiki.

In the great lagoon, which is studded with small islets, fish literally swarmed. Great gulls wheeled over the chooner's masts and screamed defiance at us.

Ashoe, in the coconut groves and tangle of tropical foliage, seabirds fought for nesting-places, and when disturbed soared aloft in a cloud, completely obscuring the sky. The noise was deafening, as if all the birds in the world had been liberated at once and were crying in unison.

On a slender branch, a ring-tailed booby bird covered its fluffy chick with one wing, and as we approached arched its wings, opened its beak, and added to the clamour of the bird colony. The chick was snow-white and for all the world like a lady's powder puff. On the ground the eggs of the bos'un birds hatched in the sun. On a thin branch three birds of different varieties were nesting. The bird colony was mixed, but happy and harmonious.

Our Manahikians plundered the nests, and omelettes provided a welcome change to the canned menu of the Tiare Taporo.

Great sharks swam round the schooner, the dreaded striped tiger shark appearing in scores. Suwarrow teemed with fish. Millions lived in those pellucid depths and flaunted their gay colourings as the shafts of sunlight penetrated to their haunts. In the clearest lagoon in the Pacifc, we observed from our whaleboat, in twelve fathoms of water, a huge Moray eel fully twenty feet in length crawl from its hiding-place within the coral and dart venomously at passing fish.

....

But there were other things in Suwarrow - the spirits of the dead, who walked the beach by night.

Out on the reef the bones of many a vessel had found their last resting-place. Bolts and rusty iron littered the beach for miles.

Ships had come from the Pacific Coast to plunder these islands and abduct and imprison the inhabitants. Those who survived the voyage in the evil-smelling holds were sent to labour on the nitrate felds of Chile and Peru.

Many of these ships had been wrecked upon Suwarrow, and the ghosts of their crews walkbed by night. These reports were not confined to the superstitious natives who had lived from time to time upon Suwarrow, for white overseers had sworn that Suwarrow was haunted."


However, what made the book even more invaluable to me was the mention of the famous American writer Robert Dean Frisbie in chapter XXXIX:


"At Puka Puka a well-known American writer came aboard. Ours was the first vessel which had called at his island for two years, and he was glad of the opportunity to talk in his own language, as he was the only European resident on the island. He had graduated from one of the largest American universities, and was not communicative. He had married a Puka Puka woman and settled down to the isolation of the last place on earth - unlovely, unwanted Puka Puka. He was coming back to Rarotonga with us for a brief vacation. His name was already well known in the short-story world, but his ambition was to write three books. He was the type of man one often meets in the islands. He hated his environment, and always talked lovingly of Kentucky, but never hinted that he might go back some day. Something kept him, and even Viggo could not drag that reason from him.

No one could understand why he married a Puka Puka woman, as they are the lowest type of natives in the Eastern Pacific. They wear scarcely any clothes, and have appalling habits. They are a curious race, and speak little, making themselves understood by movements of the lips. The American's dusky wife was no exception to the rule, but he adored her. On the voyage to Rarotonga, I watched her closely. She displayed her affection for her husband by taking the lobe of his ear between her teeth, and biting it until the blood ran freely. The American would yell out sharply and she would laugh until she cried at his discomfort. She indulged this habit particularly at mealtimes. Viggo taught her to use the cutlery. Her husband sat next to me. A favourite diversion of his was to count the ants as they ran from the galley to the scullery and food locker, and he seemed quite perturbed when the tally failed to agree with that of the preceding day. At Rarotonga, he had bought his wife her first boots and shoes. She liked them so much that she refused to take them off at bedtime and they had to be removed by force."


Frisbie's books have attained something of a cult status and the original editions are very expensive collector's items. I first became interested in his writing after having read Tom Neale's book An Island to Oneself, as it was Frisbie who had given Neale the idea of living on remote Suvarov Atoll. In fact, they had planned to live there together, albeit on different islands, until Frisbie's untimely death in 1948 spoilt that plan and Neale went there on his own in 1952.

"Trader Tom", the author of "White Man, Brown Woman", remains in the islands. Having lived with several native women, and then finally settling with a Tahiti- Polynesian, Babette, in Papeete by whom he has two children, he still meets a white woman with whom he falls madly in love.

He abandons his Polynesian mistress and lives with his white woman, Mary, who eventually finds out about his past life with native women and in turn abandons him. In desperation, he goes back to his Polynesian mistress.

Here's the book's very poignant last chapter:

"A few weeks after Mary's departure, I was summoned before the company's branch inspector from Auckland. There was a leer on his face that exasperated me.

"Is it correct that you are living with a native woman?" he asked.

"Yes."

"The company is not in favour of having an employee who lives like that."

I was silent.

"You will have to leave that woman, or ---"

"It's all right. There's no necessity to continue," I retorted decisively.

He looked at me, picked up a paper-weight, and endeavoured to conceal his embarrassment. I felt sure, in the silence that followed, that he was conscious he should not have cast that stone. He was not such a very clean potato himself.

"I'm going to stand by my girl. That means immediate dismissal, I suppose?"

"Well - er - yes. I am afraid so."

"Thank you. Good-bye."

That official incident happened many months ago. Not being able to afford rent, I had a native hut erected at Tautira, far from the noise and glamour of Papeete. It is a pretty hut of coconut leaves, hidden from the road by a coffee hedge. The sea breeze comes in through the tiny windows, and the boom of the surf lulls me to sleep. I see few of my old European friends. Now that I have no money, most of them seem to have forgotten that I ever existed. I still hear from Viggo and one or two others, all far away on other islands. The natives of the village bring fish and root crops knowing that we possess little. They do not, kindly souls, even linger to be thanked, but deposit their offerings in the kerosene-case letter-box which is nailed to the post by the roadside.

Babette is within the hut. Margarita now goes to Father Gardier's Mission School, and David is able to swim. I call out to Babette that I am nearing the end of this manuscript. She laughs happily.

After all, my plight is no worse that that of many other Europeans now living as I am doing. In the majority of cases the influx of Cantonese traders is responsible, for even the big European companies are finding it impossible to retain the services of their old employees who have lived in the South Seas so long that to migrate would bring disaster. They cannot take their French-Tahitian wives and children to the homes of their parents and relatives. Nor can they withstand the rigours of a more temperate climate. After having been "good spenders" indulging themselves to the utmost, they are reduced to living on the island mat and eating native food with their fingers. But, like all old islands identities, they accept it as inevitable and without whining.

I often visit comrades in distress. We discuss old times, and the books we have read. These friends of mine are happy enough in a way, because they are resigned to their lot.

In some degree I am content. I have a loyal mate in Babette, two lovely children and good food. All the joys of living cannot be purchased with money. I realise the current of prejudice is far too strong for me to swim out of a murky past to a cloudless future. My only attempt ended in disaster.

Some time ago I wrote to Mary, asking her permission to include in this story of my life that of our tragic association. She replied:

"You have my permission. It may serve to help others. Perhaps they will think a little before going too far, and realise that behind the song of the surf there is something which drags good men to the depths of despair, and magically draws good women towards these men."

ooo000ooo


The moon is hiding behind a bank of clouds. The lagoon is as silent as the infinite. Far out on the reef the surf croons, luring one to peace and forgetfulness. In the Mission the bells toll the hour of seven. Babette has said her prayers and gone to bed. Stars come out in myriads. The moon climbs higher and sheds its path of silvery radiance acress the sea. Crckets cheep to each other, and a dying breeze stirs the brushwood.

I walk down to the beach gleaming silver white under the moon. The lights of the fishermen on the reef glow like harbour beacons. Tahiti, you are a poisoned paradise. Tahiti, I curse you. I warn others to stay away from your shores, and yet, if I did escape from your fascination, I know I should never know content until I nestled close to your heart again!

A white man passes on horseback, a planter returning home along the beach.

"Good night, Tom."

"Good night, Emmanuel."

"No work yet, Tom?"

"No, Emmanuel."

"Ah! The bloody islands are going to hell!"


THE END




Monday, May 10, 2010

Wheels are made for rollin' ...

 

... but the wheels of my old trusty TOYOTA Camry roll no more.

We were in town this morning. The wife was driving. We were behind another car which slowed down. My wife didn't. I yelled, "Hit the brakes!" She did. What a pity the pedal she stomped on was the accelerator!

 

 

The Camry is a write-off. My nerves, too. However, living 8 km upriver from the Bay meant we needed a new car right away. So I went to a car dealer who asked me what sort of car I preferred. I said preferably something with four wheels.

We finished up with a well-kept second-hand FORD Focus Hatchback, Model 2006, with 54,485km on the clock and a price of $15,990 on the windshield - which I reduced to $14,000 but was still overcharged.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Life doesn't get much better than this!


Sitting on my boat lying at anchor in a peaceful cove, with a glass of Jacob's Creek Merlot in my hand and the radio tuned to FM Classical Music - life doesn't get much better than this!

David Glasheen on Restoration Island, Horst Berger on Uiha Island, the Hepworth Family on Pigeon Island, Ron Brandt on Packe Island, "German Harry " on Deliverance Island, Tom Neale on Suwarrov: they all had their reasons to shun civilisation but I can enjoy their lifestyle and yet rejoin the "real world" anytime I want by simply driving down the 8 km to the Bay.

I may even sleep aboard "Lady Anne" tonight. With the companionway left half-open, I can watch the stars as the waves gently rock me to sleep. I have all the victuals in the galley: tinned baked beans, tinned braised steak, tinned rice cream pudding, bread, tea, coffee, sugar, and another bottle of Jacob's Creek!

I drink to that!

Friday, May 7, 2010

Australian culture in nine easy lessons



Part 2     Part 3    Part 4    Part 5    Part 6    Part 7    Part 8    Part 9

Definition: culture (noun), a controlled growth of bacteria.

And here's where you find it.

A little ripper of a film with a great supporting cast but the stand-out of the film is the legendary Chad Morgan, the Sheik of Scrubby Creek, an Australian country music legend.



Monday, May 3, 2010

μεταφέρω

In his novel Germinal, the French writer Émile Zola describes how he and the miners who served as his guides were 150 feet below the ground when Zola noticed an enormous workhorse, a beautiful Percheron, pulling a sled piled with coal through a tunnel.

Zola asked, 'How do you get that animal in and out of the mine every day?' At first the miners thought he was joking. Then they realised he was serious, and one of them said, 'Mr Zola, don't you understand? That horse comes down here once, when he's a colt, barely more than a foal, and still able to fit into the buckets that bring us down here. That horse grows up down here. He grows blind down here after a year or two, from the lack of light. He hauls coal down here until he can't haul it anymore, and then he dies down here, and his bones are buried down here.'

As you read those words, it makes the hair on your arms stand on end because you realise that the horse is a metaphor for the miners, indeed for so many workers, who trot along in their work, blind to their real purpose in life.

If you aren't blind yet, do yourself a favour and read the book or watch the movie: