Massive outcry - I mean outbreak of hypocrisy

Parkes - 3 hours drive up the road. Elvis train runs Sydney to Parkes, a 5 hour drive to get on the train, which then takes about 4 hours to get there...

Fair call. I defer to your greater knowledge of the stock routes.

And besides, why go to Parkes to see a bunch of people impersonating one of the greatest entertainers ever? That'd be kind of like going to a 20-over a side match and expecting it to provide the thrills, drama, changes in mood, and excitement of a Test match.

Well, not my cuppa tea, Ye Old Emperor (yes!!! I spelt it right), but some live for it.

Which? The Elvis impersonator, or the twenty-over stuff?

Elvis.

Thank you very much.

Prejudices are present everywhere, no human being is exempt. Some manage them better or atleast make sure that they don't turn into actions. For most it takes a lifetime to get over these.

By extension racism and other predudices exist in every country. When it comes to India there are some extreme prejudices in people's minds driven by cultural, regional, appearance and religious differences.

For example even today there are movements in Bombay to get rid of people from the North and South. These are not exactly fringe movements either. In places like Bihar caste related incidents are still common place. That said India has only been a free country for about 60 years. For centuries she had been under invasions and colonisations by various powers, not just European. The legacy of this is not easy to shake up.

Thankfully India went with the right constitution based on democratic secular values. This is a tribute to the overall cultural tolernce that the majority of the population pocess.

In the last 20 years India has been able to break free from the legacy and is progressing in many aspects, some faster than others. As with Maslow's needs hierarchy some of the basic essentials need to be fulfilled before progressing to some of the higher level needs.

Coming to Australia, in comparison to US and UK there are very few extreme elements, very much a fringe minority. So any attempt to project racism as an institutionalised practice is just rubbish.

The problem I have seen with Australia is that the Anglo Saxon middle majorty has a problem in facing up to some truths. This is both across the population and media. Whether it is about the treatment meted to the native aborigines or "boorish" behaviour of their player fraternity.
It took decades for the Australian mainstream to acknowledge that things like the "Stolen Generation" were just wrong and even longer to tender an apology to those populations.

Under this background I am not surprised that there is denial and the refusal to accept that there are racist elemetns in their community.

As it goes these things always take the Anger - Denial - Acceptance - Remedy route. That is how the human psyche works.

You forgot 'bargaining', Josh. And 'depression'.

This thread has legs.

Josh, top work.

Unfortunately Australia goes through those phases, especially in relation to social issus in a scattergun way, dependant on moods sometimes driven by whoever's in power

For example for many years we were in denial about the Aboriginal problem. Then in the late sixties there was acceptance but no real remedy.

In the seventies some form of remedy was foisted upon a large area of Australia due to bi-partisanship, but there was little acceptance and a great deal of anger.

Throughout the eighties and nineties there was a national move towards acceptance and a number of remedies were tried or talked about with varying degrees of success. This lead to a renewed denial movement fuelled by extreme partisanship.

You could probably see this pattern in immigration, welfare, IR and equal opportunities.

I think we've been victims for a long time wiyh a political cycle that seems to be forever out of sync with public attitudes, whichever end of the spectrum those attitudes come from.

Legs in this thread? No tits??