16 November

I challenge the now common idea that this sort of thing is ‘community concerns’. Having seen this from the inside in local government too. So often it’s a handful of local activists, stirring up shit, usually through social media, and then derailing any sensible initiative happening. Robert Hughes before he died identified the ‘culture of complaint’ we now live in. It gets worse every day. It wouldn’t matter how tiny something is that a local council might want to do, for example, it’s completely overwhelmed by an avalanche of toxic anger and activism. I made the same point about LGBTQIA+ activism. How even within that acronym you have competing groups who despise one another, or who even define themselves in ways that make other letters of the acronym non-existent. And yet the acronym is used to suggest it’s some community of like-minded souls. It absolutely isn’t.