It Led To This

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It completely died, everything, eradicated, just like that. Flick of a button and all text gone. Flick of a switch and a flick of history. His moaning self abasement had begun to bore even himself. The pain kept pounding through the side of his face relentlessly. She was tired. He was tired. The pain had completely demolished them. He was uncertain where to move. He couldn't understand why this was happening. He felt, histrionically, as if God had selected him out for suffering, was punishing him for his misbegotten ways, for having strayed from the pure path, for having gone out howling at the moonlight and watching the other night animals prowl down the alleys at the back of the city, behind everything.

We gathered in places not of our own choosing. We wept at what had brought us here, not really, we drank and damaged ourselves further, the spray of alcohol bruising on brown breath, everything smelt. He wasn't even going to pretend to be happy about this. There was nothing to be gained from straight forward pain dissecting his face. No amount of romanticisation of the suffering of Christ was going to help make the experience any more illuminating. He was shocked at the desolation, shocked at how quickly everything could fall apart, shocked at the memories of what had led him to sitting in that car by the churning winter sea, two small children at home, wondering, wondering, what had led to this?

He warmed his hands against the fire in the bin. He knew so many things; they kept spilling back, here in desolation alley. It was a laugh, honestly, if only the pain would stop. There had been so many turning points. What was the last wrong turning point? Dying in Asia, protected by gangsters, well connected enough to live comfortably. So much for secret pasts. He could still remember, who wanted to hear those words? The coloured lights bouncing of the disco ball was virtually the only lighting. He sat on a bar stool drinking Thai whisky and coke. He was perfectly pissed and happy to continue the trend. Everything was where he wanted it to be, in a penthouse bar on the top floor of one of the highest buildings in Penang, just absolutely sanctioned and battened from view.

This was what the pain was doing, casting him back to better times, anything to escape. He didn't know how anyone could endure torture. He couldn't endure an infected tooth. Everything fell apart. He sat in a well of his own misery and forgot all about courage, decency, energy, commitment, creativity, charm, grace, amusement. He forgot to be human and could only think of escape. His entire instinct had been to hide, but there was no hiding from pain that was already inside your face. He was shattered by the loose connection, party doors opening and sound spilling out, intoxicated laughter on the night air, the scent of everything, possibility, lust.

All the things that had made him human were gone now. He was shadowed by an arthritic old man. His kindness had grown with his own self absorption, empathy easy to dial up; at least for the disfigured, the dysfunctional, the out-of-sync. He only had to look up as he was opening the car door and the woman looked up at him, assessing opportunity. She was being regularly overtaken by fast moving, young, fit university students on the way to class. He could see she was damaged, most likely by alcohol. She was walking slower than everybody else, hobbling almost, and had a puffy, used up face with broken capillaries. She looked at him directly, as if they had known each other in a former life.

All was not lost, he was convinced of that at the breaking of a new day. We all had to fulfil our roles. There were worst things than changing roles. He often felt isolated, as if he was the only one. But then the commonality of human experience was all around him. He looked at shattered relics every day; people who had once been much like himself, full of hope. That he now empathised with the old and not the young was an alarming shift. He was being shadowed by darker forces. All he wanted was peace and quiet down a country lane. Somewhere no one could find him. Somewhere to hide. That had always been the primary instinct; and would always remain so. To find somewhere that no one cared; who he was, what he was, where he had been. The end of the signal.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25294101-661,00.html

NEW mums now are unlikely to get the full benefits of a proposed 18-week maternity scheme, as the Government struggles to keep its Budget under control.

The proposed taxpayer-funded paid maternity leave scheme was likely to be scaled back severely, according Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner.

But there may yet be money for another economic stimulus package to keep the economy going, with a suggestion that $100 billion in predicted deficits would go even higher.

The Opposition has also declared it will try to block the Budget if it believes the Government is wasting taxpayers' money.

Warning also of cutbacks to higher education and industry incentives, Mr Tanner said the budget razor gang was having to make "tough decisions".

Speaking on the Nine Network yesterday, Mr Tanner nominated paid maternity leave as being in the gun for being cut back.

"I'm certainly not by any means suggesting (paid maternity) is off the table, but it is just a lot harder than perhaps we anticipated six or nine months ago to deal with these issues in this Budget in a very substantial way," he said.

The Rudd Government had previously committed itself to a paid maternity leave after a productivity commission recommended an 18-week taxpayer-funded scheme costing around $1.3 billion.

Six months ago, just before the global economy imploded, the commission suggested scrapping the $5000 baby bonus and replacing it with a scheme that gave mothers a minimum of $544 to stay at home with their newborn. Mr Tanner said the government was waiting to see how well the current stimulus package worked.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/g20-summit/5105508/How-President-Obama-managed-to-unlock-the-G20-Summit.html

It was the summit that ushered in a new world order, but for 30 excruciating minutes on Thursday afternoon the leaders of the world's biggest economies stared into the abyss. With the clock ticking away towards the mid-afternoon deadline, the G20 had reached a deadlock: China and France were still refusing to sign the concluding communique.

For all the world it looked as if, after months of planning and thousands of collective hours of behind-the-scenes negotiation, the entire G20 summit would collapse and with it the hopes of finding a comprehensive, united plan for mending the world economy.

So what was the cause of this impasse? The barbed question of fiscal stimulus? Plans to regulate hedge funds? International Monetary Fund reform, perhaps? No, in fact, the G20's success or failure hinged instead on the choice of one six-letter word in the darkest reaches of the statement.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was intent that the communique should say the G20 would "endorse" a blacklist of tax havens produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The Chinese President Hu Jintao was adamant that it should not. The atmosphere blackened. While not aggressive, the men were refusing to give any ground. That neither would speak to anyone without interpreters wasn't helping either. Though no one mentioned it, everyone knew that the pair had apparently irreconcilable differences on this, having spent an hour debating the issue at Sarkozy's hotel the previous night, again without success.

Though the rest of the day's negotiations had gone well, with the G20 agreed on new measures to revamp international financial regulation and more compellingly on a comprehensive overhaul of the IMF, as time ticked towards the 3.30pm finishing press conference the prospect of a collapse in the negotiations reared its head...

Though the rest of the day's negotiations had gone well, with the G20 agreed on new measures to revamp international financial regulation and more compellingly on a comprehensive overhaul of the IMF, as time ticked towards the 3.30pm finishing press conference the prospect of a collapse in the negotiations reared its head.

Even a late arrival at the press conference would spark rumours about discord; rumours which could cause the markets − up a couple of percentage points in the early afternoon − to slide.

Perhaps predictably, the rescue operation was carried out by none other than the President of the United States. This was Barack Obama's first international summit, but you would hardly have guessed. In an unusual break with protocol, he had been invited by Gordon Brown, the host, to address the G20 dinner the previous night and make some opening remarks on April 2. Now, after whispering with Mr Brown, he took Sarkozy aside to one corner of the room, huddled for five minutes, then did the same, separately, with Hu. Finally he brought them both together in that same corner, interpreters and all and, as the rest of the world's leaders muttered to themselves, he urged them not to be distracted by the bigger economic issues.

"Take a step back," he told Sarkozy. "Let's get this into some kind of perspective." He suggested changing the word "endorse" to "note". There was a brief moment of hesitation, but then both sides agreed. Minutes later they signed the communique. The press conference was only delayed for around half an hour. The rest is history, or at least what Brown referred to as a "historic moment".

Summits such as the one that dominated the headlines over the week and which culminated with that contretemps in the ExCeL centre in London's Docklands, are usually determined more by mood than by actual tangible results. And the arrival of Obama on the scene helped crystallise the mood of optimism that pervaded the day. However, as they addressed their respective press conferences at the end of the day, both Brown and Obama were hit with the one question neither could satisfactorily answer: what will this actually do for your people?

The best they could say was that their own rescue plans would work far better when set against the backdrop of a recovering world economy. Which is true, but is hardly what people were expecting to hear after being told that $1.1 trillion of their money was set to be channelled into a variety of international measures.

The truth, however, which is probably as alarming to economists as it is to voters, is that for all the big numbers trotted out on the day, barely a penny or cent in fresh cash was actually stumped up by the nations. Dissect the $1.1 trillion and soon enough you realise the vast majority was already committed some weeks or months ago. Moreover, most of the cash is a contingent liability, in other words it will only be called upon if the IMF's prospective loans to struggling economies actually default − something that is highly unlikely.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/g20-summit/5100933/Jose-Manuel-Barroso-warns-millions-more-Europeans-will-lose-their-jobs.html

josé Manuel Barroso told the Daily Telegraph that the bottom had not yet been reached. "We have not yet reached the worst moment in jobs. That is honestly our assessment. Tackling unemployment is my number one priority." Europe, consensus estimates show, is braced for millions more to be out of work before a turning point in the next 12 months.

The stark warning came as the US announced that over 5 million jobs had been lost since the recession started 16 months ago.

Mr Barroso, in his first newspaper interview since the London summit's conclusion on Thursday, admitted that tensions among the members of the European Union as the crisis took hold in December had imperilled the existence of the single market. Different countries were taking unilateral actions such as huge bailouts of their banks that undermined competition policy and pacts on budget deficits.

"There was a moment, I would say almost a quasi-panic situation, when I saw some national politicians turning towards protectionism in the face of this completely new situation."

He said countries started to forge their own recovery paths without reference to EU rules. "It put into question the stability and growth pact in Europe and also the competition and state aid rules."

But Mr Barroso said countries were now working together. Critics argue that budget deficits will still have to be reduced and that some countries are under tremendous pressure within the eurozone.

Mr Barroso expressed satisfaction that the G20 was converging on a view of the global economy centred on the European Union's vision of free markets with strong regulation.

At the G20, he said: "You saw China, Russia and others completely commited to the principles of a market economy but unbridled capitalism [has] also given way to a more European model. Now we have the Americans committed to this agenda, this is completely new."

While Mr Barroso was at the summit in east London, he said his eldest son Luís, a law student, was with the protesters in the City of London. But he said his son was not protesting, and had instead been telling his father what was happening. Luís had given him a quotation from John Lennon that Mr Barroso had borne in mind amid the hectic politicking and diplomacy of the summit. "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."