Why do I think the preservation of a working fifty-year old bluestone toilet block, in the face of its unnecessary replacement by a production-line designed one, so important that I can bring myself to promote a change.org petition to save it? Because somehow this blocky polylith has shown the capacity to unite us, where we can agree on little else. We live in a very atomised society, suburbanites here in Australia, victims of change and population engineering. People find it difficult to agree on complex politics, but the toilet block is an obvious example of something that does not need fixing, but that someone is fixing to fix. It should be too small for the council to fight us over it, but since the council intends to replace all bluestone blocks, stopping this would obviously frustrate a significant financial transaction. Someone is benefiting financially from this overkill, but not us.
Somehow the threatened removal of the sturdy bluestone toilets symbolizes important elements of our disempowerment. Some of these are our resentment at impermanence, our growing lack of local self-determination, lack of real consultation in favour of manufactured consent, industrial design over artisanship, synthetics over stone and trees, abuse of authority, planning facism, consumerism, delocalisation of decisions, spin replacing argument, and corporate beneficiaries taking over local employment and manufacture.
Our state-ruled local government has different values from many of the locals. These values are for the imposition of unnecessary new infrastructure of banal style and flimsy construction in place of something that anyone can see is durable and which has taken on the thermodynamic patina of age and locality – a sign that it belongs. Somehow this toilet block seems the right place to make a stand. See the petition here or republished below.
Community outrage continues in the battle to protect the iconic Dandenong Ranges from inappropriate development following Knox Council’s recent failure to adopt the independent Panel recommendation for mandatory maximum height controls in the Upper Ferntree Gully Activity Centre. Knox Appropriate Development Alliance President, Catherine Kruse said that a petition to the State Government calling for their intervention is gathering momentum with interest from across Victoria. A rally is also planned for Monday February 27th at the Knox Council offices.
Jeff Dorset has begun a campaign addressed to the Prime Minister to reduce Australia`s economic, non refugee immigration intake to economically.environmentally and socially responsible level of 50,000 net pa and significantly reduce 457 Visa and other foreign worker import program. Please consider signing it.
To: Ambassadors of nations on the UN Security Council including Samantha Power of the United States, Francois Delattre of France, Mark Lyall Grant of the UK, Vitaly Churkin of Russia, Liu Jeiyi of China and the non-permanent members
What's different about this petition to tackle overpopulation in Australia? It is published on the Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC) site. AWPC, it seems, is the only wildlife group that remains real and courageous when it comes to protecting our fauna. AWPC is entirely staffed by volunteers, is Australia-wide, and hasn't just become some kind of professional fund-raising organisation. This one comes from Matt Moran of Brisbane, Australia and is posted on the 
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