danny’s space

Should have told myself that before instigating mass community advisory on the Optarse tower matter.

Some people reckon it has the potential to get huge, involving countless meetings and debates. Of course I don’t have time for that - but I thought that all it would involve would be answering a few emails and getting something small together. Well, okay not that small, but not that big either.

Now that the community advisory has been distributed, there comes fear of repercussions and leadership-o-phobia - fear of being put on the spot as being the one in charge of this ‘massive’ community whinge. So add in some act-before-you-think from members of the family, and you have yourself a confusing, backflipping mess that threatens to tear a hole in the very fabric of existence.

Maybe one man can do something. But what if that one man is time starved already? Is it about priorities? Is it about delegation of responsibilities? Is it about everyone for themselves? Should the original heralder of the dark tidings be the one to pull it all together? What if the heralder was going overseas (very timely, I know) for the next few weeks.

Laziness sucks. So does action.

Our neighbour has walked around a bit and talked to other neighbours and also the school, childcare, and retirement village surrounding the proposed site of installation. Obviously, everyone is unanimously opposed to the construction of the mobile phone tower. I’m not sure if the council is much help - the elections I think were held a month or so ago, so obviously they won’t be looking at the community for another 3 years. The mobile phone company and the contractors are also not much help, giving only patchy information and even not responding to requests. The local paper has been tipped off about this. We’ll see what it does.

The scientific data regarding health effects of mobile base stations is patchy. It generally seems like there isn’t any proven link between base stations and direct health effects, but it isn’t unproven either. People living around base stations do complain of depression, sleep deprivation, anxiety, and that kind of stuff, but it might all be psychosomatic. But that doesn’t mean it’s not important.

A useful resource is the Stewart Report, and even though that’s for the UK, the basic issues still apply here. Things like sneaky phone companies not properly consulting the community. Things like children absorbing more radiation than adults (I’m sure the parents of the kids that go to the childcare centre and the primary school will be stoked to hear about that). Things like telcos erecting phone towers in the middle of the night.

We’ll wait to see what happens. In the meantime, a letter is going out to the households around the area informing them of this situation. A petition is being circulated as well, and even though they don’t have any legal power, because it is 10 months to the state elections, perhaps the local state member will do something about it.

Nothing works. Science sucks. There, I said it. Molecular biology hates me or something. I just got back home after a whole day at uni. At 5:30pm, on a Saturday.

Everything seems to be going wrong at once. The printer breaks. This Optus thing comes up. My 6th attempt at cloning fails. My supervisor leaves for China. I need to come up with ways to make youth group studies more exciting.

I can’t take much more of this.

Our neighbour told us yesterday that he had received a letter from Optarse outlining the construction of a new mobile phone tower at the BP opposite our house. In addition to the one that’s already there. This one will stand tall and proud, irradiating the passers-by on that busy road.

Why is this a problem, apart from the fact that it’s yet another radiation emitter? Optarse failed to send us a letter letting us know about this, and, typical of these project proposals, the time for objection had already passed by the time we found out about it. April 27 was the last day to object. That was 3 weeks ago. We found out yesterday. Great.

Shows Optarse’s concern for the community. And far be it for the owners of BP to complain - they don’t live there. Plus they can charge Optarse insane amounts for not one but two telecommunications towers that bask its property (and the families around it) in its healthy glow.

Living so close to a petrol station that has trouble with fume escape when refilling its copious tanks, plus the presence of 2 mobile phone towers, must be so conducive towards good health. Plus the thousands of cars that jam on that busy road every day. I can see the house price rising already.