James
12-01-2005, 12:39 PM
Why I said yes to Big Brother's shilling
(Filed: 12/01/2005)
Yesterday, Germaine Greer walked out of Channel 4's Big Brother house, after spending four and a half days in the company of racing tipster John McCririck, actress Brigitte Nielsen and assorted other C-list celebrities. But why did the distinguished feminist and literary critic take part in the show at all, having once described watching it as 'about as dignified as looking through the keyhole in your teenage child's bedroom door'?
By now, many Telegraph readers will know that I've been held incommunicado in the Big Brother house for the past few days. I have not read a newspaper or seen or heard a news broadcast since January 6.
Forest to maintain: Germaine Greer
I have been without any means of telling the time, or writing a word, except with a finger in the sand. I, who have spent my entire life reading, even if it was only the text on the back of the crispies packet or the flap of someone else's newspaper, have been in a totally text-free space.
So why did I put myself through this entirely avoidable ordeal? My reason is the rainforest. I finance the rehabilitation of my 125 acres in south-east Queensland entirely out of my taxed income. If something were to happen to me, the project would collapse in a matter of days. Accepting the Celebrity Big Brother challenge has earned me a lump of cash that will be the rainforest cushion.
In the meantime, I have to think of a better way of doing it. My work force of four are paid well enough to cover the expenses of their travel to and from the site and leave enough over to represent a truly competitive pay scale. They aren't working solely for the money, but I've no intention of penalising them for their goodwill, especially as it makes them more efficient and more reliable, giving me better value.
The workforce, too, pays tax in Australia, which means that the money that supports the rainforest is twice taxed, which is a very expensive way of doing anything, let alone something that can't make a profit, whether in money or in improvement in the value of the property.
Everything I've done there has actually reduced the market value of my property. There are those who think that the restoration of natural landscape will one day result in higher land values, but I think their sky is full of pie.
So why don't I secure charitable status for the project?
As I understand the situation, I would first have to relinquish ownership of the property and place it in the hands of trustees, whom I would have to trust not to kick me off the board and go their own sweet way.
I'm not sure that the restoration of a unique ecosystem is a charitable enterprise, if it comes to that. Simply not making a profit is not the same as supplying a social need. There are people who would like to give me donations, but not enough of them, I suspect, to make the paperwork worthwhile.
As it is, we need no auditors and publish no accounts, and we don't have to go cap in hand to charity commissioners, blowing our own trumpet ad nauseam. More and more local authorities in Australia are being required to espouse the cause of conservation, mainly by employing tiers of experts and consultants, all with their own ideas about how the job should be done, ideas usually derived from academic courses and not from experience on the ground. Already we have more contradictory advice than we can handle.
Any attempt to secure official status for our project would probably involve us in more and more time-wasting and report-writing. The awesome foursome are astonishingly bad at writing even the briefest of reports.
So we will probably continue to bumble on as we do now. But if an expert fund-raiser watching my struggle to survive in the Big Brother house should feel inclined to teach me a better way, I am disposed to listen and to learn.
In my deepest heart, in the dead of night, I discover another reason for betaking myself to the Big Brother house. For a few days at least, I have been living something like the life my mother leads in a nursing home in Victoria. She, too, believes that in a few days she will be going back to her own house.
She has no autonomy and no privacy whatsoever. She is allowed to read but the words mean nothing. She reads the same page of the same thumbed women's magazine over and over again. The television set suspended from the ceiling is never off, but she can't follow whatever it is that is showing.
Sometimes she says, wistfully: "I'm losing touch, but it's not my fault." When her meal tray is brought, senile old men drift into her room and eat her food with their fingers, while she smiles graciously upon them, like a queen.
For my mother, there's only one way out of the Big Brother house. God forbid that I should complain.
Daily Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/01/12/ftgreer12.xml)
(Filed: 12/01/2005)
Yesterday, Germaine Greer walked out of Channel 4's Big Brother house, after spending four and a half days in the company of racing tipster John McCririck, actress Brigitte Nielsen and assorted other C-list celebrities. But why did the distinguished feminist and literary critic take part in the show at all, having once described watching it as 'about as dignified as looking through the keyhole in your teenage child's bedroom door'?
By now, many Telegraph readers will know that I've been held incommunicado in the Big Brother house for the past few days. I have not read a newspaper or seen or heard a news broadcast since January 6.
Forest to maintain: Germaine Greer
I have been without any means of telling the time, or writing a word, except with a finger in the sand. I, who have spent my entire life reading, even if it was only the text on the back of the crispies packet or the flap of someone else's newspaper, have been in a totally text-free space.
So why did I put myself through this entirely avoidable ordeal? My reason is the rainforest. I finance the rehabilitation of my 125 acres in south-east Queensland entirely out of my taxed income. If something were to happen to me, the project would collapse in a matter of days. Accepting the Celebrity Big Brother challenge has earned me a lump of cash that will be the rainforest cushion.
In the meantime, I have to think of a better way of doing it. My work force of four are paid well enough to cover the expenses of their travel to and from the site and leave enough over to represent a truly competitive pay scale. They aren't working solely for the money, but I've no intention of penalising them for their goodwill, especially as it makes them more efficient and more reliable, giving me better value.
The workforce, too, pays tax in Australia, which means that the money that supports the rainforest is twice taxed, which is a very expensive way of doing anything, let alone something that can't make a profit, whether in money or in improvement in the value of the property.
Everything I've done there has actually reduced the market value of my property. There are those who think that the restoration of natural landscape will one day result in higher land values, but I think their sky is full of pie.
So why don't I secure charitable status for the project?
As I understand the situation, I would first have to relinquish ownership of the property and place it in the hands of trustees, whom I would have to trust not to kick me off the board and go their own sweet way.
I'm not sure that the restoration of a unique ecosystem is a charitable enterprise, if it comes to that. Simply not making a profit is not the same as supplying a social need. There are people who would like to give me donations, but not enough of them, I suspect, to make the paperwork worthwhile.
As it is, we need no auditors and publish no accounts, and we don't have to go cap in hand to charity commissioners, blowing our own trumpet ad nauseam. More and more local authorities in Australia are being required to espouse the cause of conservation, mainly by employing tiers of experts and consultants, all with their own ideas about how the job should be done, ideas usually derived from academic courses and not from experience on the ground. Already we have more contradictory advice than we can handle.
Any attempt to secure official status for our project would probably involve us in more and more time-wasting and report-writing. The awesome foursome are astonishingly bad at writing even the briefest of reports.
So we will probably continue to bumble on as we do now. But if an expert fund-raiser watching my struggle to survive in the Big Brother house should feel inclined to teach me a better way, I am disposed to listen and to learn.
In my deepest heart, in the dead of night, I discover another reason for betaking myself to the Big Brother house. For a few days at least, I have been living something like the life my mother leads in a nursing home in Victoria. She, too, believes that in a few days she will be going back to her own house.
She has no autonomy and no privacy whatsoever. She is allowed to read but the words mean nothing. She reads the same page of the same thumbed women's magazine over and over again. The television set suspended from the ceiling is never off, but she can't follow whatever it is that is showing.
Sometimes she says, wistfully: "I'm losing touch, but it's not my fault." When her meal tray is brought, senile old men drift into her room and eat her food with their fingers, while she smiles graciously upon them, like a queen.
For my mother, there's only one way out of the Big Brother house. God forbid that I should complain.
Daily Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/01/12/ftgreer12.xml)