General Interest
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Are We There Yet? No? Shame.
AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Sunday, May 8, 2022 This isn’t the midpoint of the 2022 federal election campaign. It just feels that way, or possibly that we have yet to really start. In fact, we’re over the hump. Did anyone notice? Is anyone counting? There is a fortnight to go, a full 14 days of glee club Continue reading
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Ho hum. Repeat.
AUSTRALIA | 2022 ELECTION Tuesday, Apr. 19, 2022 The Easter weekend, over which this column was crafted, was a campaign quiet spot. Every election campaign should have at least one buzz-free zone. This one’s got two, courtesy of ANZAC Day. A bonus! Thank goodness for small mercies. Though we always knew the big guns would Continue reading
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Don’t Expect to be Excited
AUSTRALIAN POLITICS | ELECTION 2022 Tuesday, Apr. 5, 2022 Sooner or later, this week or next, Scott Morrison will make his prime ministerial trip out to Yarralumla on the lake in Canberra, to ask the Governor-General to authorise a half-Senate and full House of Representatives election. So runs the form, and such is the constitutional Continue reading
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Politics and the Age Pension
Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2022 My latest scribble from The Desk of the Retired Fulminator It will soon be budget time again, that annual festival featuring temporary triumph of hope over experience (again), inventive mathematics, and wall to wall politics. The Venice Carnival it isn’t, granted; but as an inescapable bet on a regular fiscal trifecta, Continue reading
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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 Continue reading
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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 Continue reading
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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 Continue reading
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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 Continue reading
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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 Continue reading
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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 Continue reading
8º of latitude 