Author: 8degreesoflatitude
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The Sun Never Sets, Etc
Monday, Jan. 31, 2022 Though the glow does tend to diminish. In a sort of allegory of the diminution and eventual demise of the British empire (a process I was privileged to see first-hand and in which I peripherally participated in an earlier age) I’m now shuffling around my personal empire turning out lights and […]
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Welcome, Australia
Some thoughts on why January 26 shouldn’t be our national day Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2022 Australia Day generally comes and goes as it pleases in my little corner of the blogosphere. Flag waving, anthem singing, feelgood nationalism and themed barbecues have never been my thing. I’ve been an Australian for 50 years and always counted […]
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Get Set for the Merry-go-round
AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022 It’s election year. This may not fill our hearts with glee. But it will certainly fill our minds with polly waffle and expose us to more photo opportunities than we would wish upon our worst enemies. Such, unfortunately, is the business of modern electioneering: Never mind the content, feel […]
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Two Very Special Gifts
It’s so nearly the end of the year and already I am impatient to start 2022. It’s almost here, up there on the brow of the hill, I can see it … Two Very Special Gifts
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Off Their Faces
SOCIAL MEDIA | Bans Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021 An old friend* has been banned from Facebook. It’s not a temporary ban, of the sort the platform’s annoying algorithms and equally irritating geeks might mete out to people who fail to genuflect to the Great Cursor, or who post something Zuckerberg geeks deem disrespectful, like saying […]
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Fortunes of War
ARTS | Books and Films Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021 We’re watching Fortunes of War, the 1987 BBC dramatization of Olivia Manning’s Balkan and Levantine trilogies. I should say, we’re re-watching it – on YouTube – three years since first doing so, al fresco, on a laptop computer lounging in the evening heat on our pool […]
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Do Yourself a Favour, Gladys
Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021 I have some sympathy for former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian, as, I think, would many people who implicitly understand that no one is perfect, least of all themselves. She did the right thing – eventually – when the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) named her as a person of interest […]
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There’s a lot of bull in this China shop
Sunday, Nov. 28, 2021 Well, forgetting the bull for the present, there’s a lot of blue water – literally in this case – between the fractious business of managing relations with China and doing the sort of pre-boy on the burning deck routine we’re seeing in Australia from the government and its fellow travellers. There […]
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Let’s Not Forget
Saturday, Nov. 27, 2021 There’s a lovely verse in Baker Street, Gerry Rafferty’s 1978 track – it has headed my personal hit parade for more than four decades – and it seems apt, almost totemic, as a way of describing life as I am living it these days: He’s got this dream about buying some […]
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Is it time to consider a universal wage?
Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021 Every cloud has a silver lining. Well, that’s if you’re lucky and you believe in ancient aphorisms. But there’s certainly a silver lining under the big covid cloud if the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) attracts you. Serious academic study of the concept and of its associated cost is […]
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