Home Renovations

At the moment we are renovating what is now our spare room.  This was my son's room but he felt that as he starts work early in the morning (5.30) he really needed to be in our old spare room as it's air conditioned.  So we've cleaned out the spare room, washed it all down with sugar soap and got stuck into repairing the walls where posters and pictures and truck badges were stuck up all over the place.  I pulled out over 100 staples out of the door where my son had used the staple gun to put up some Christmas decorations in 2009.  He is now banned from using the staple gun forever!

So last week, I'm up the ladder with my MP3 turned up to full volume, singing along and scaring all the neighbours dogs, sanding the walls with an electric sander,  when my daughter brings me in a cuppa.  I completely forgot that I'm on the ladder at this stage and step off.  Luckily I was only two rungs up the ladder.  My daughter tries to grab hold of me but is not sure if she should try to catch me or the sander and instead, drops the cup and misses both.  My poor little dog who came in to see what all the fuss is about, saw things going everywhere and took off out the door!

Finally, after the dust had settled, I'm sitting on a paint can, ice pack on my foot - yep broke one of those little bones on the top of my foot.  Haven't done much to the spare room since then, waiting for my foot to heal a bit first.  The moral of the story (from my daughters veiwpoint): don't take mum a cup of tea when she's on the ladder - it's only asking for trouble!  PS she said at least she stopped me from singing!

Who is a local?

There seems to be an age old debate on who exactly is a local. If you look up 'local' in the dictionary you will find something like this: of or in a certain place, especially the place one lives in. To me, a local is someone who lives in the community, possibly has a job locally, who may have children who attend local schools, participate in local sports/clubs etc, someone who supports the community by purchasing goods and services locally, perhaps you even volunteer for a local charity.

Why is it then, that most "locals" look unfavourably upon new residents? It seems that in order to be a local, one must have lived in the area for at least two decades. People who move to a new community should definately be given local status as they have chosen to move to the area.

But when it comes to jobs, should this be the case? The reason this has been on my mind lately is I saw by chance a job advertised on Rio Tinto's web site, a job vacancy which clearly stated that only locals could apply, however, if you were prepared to uproot you family and move to the area, you would then be eligible to apply (tough luck if you don't get the job!).

There is so much emphasis of late about spending money locally to keep business enterprise alive and small communities must do whatever they can to encourage people to the area. But if this then becomes the norm, what happens to the locals who already live in the community? Is it fair on them to be passed over for jobs when they are integrated into the community?

To be fair to Rio Tinto, trying to encourage people to a small community is a difficult undertaking, especially when the cost of living in that area is out of this world. If they do manage to encourage more people to the area, what effect will that have on the locals? Will resentment fester and breed? Or will everyone learn to live in harmony? It will be interesting to see what develops over the next few years.