Collingwood Vs Carlton? The Stuff Of Nightmares

Several years ago, I was in the lift on the way back from lunch at AFL finals time and happened to make some Collingwood jokes. By the time I had reached my desk, my phone was ringing. It was one of the HR Managers. He said: “Ernest, what were you saying in the lift?” I …

No One Likes Alan: Reflections On Qantas

I did lunch last week at the Great Northern Hotel in North Carlton with a friend who is a very senior barrister. Given that I am about to hop on a plane to Italy in a few days’ time, we talked a fair bit about travel, and particularly about the scandals which are currently plaguing …

Qatar’s Clumsy Attempts At Both Sportswashing and Skywashing

This week has seen a bit of a blow up in the purported controversy about Qatar Airways being denied the opportunity to have more flights to and from Australia. The revelations that Qantas has been treating its customers in what can be charitably described as a kleptomaniacal manner has raised rage at the protection that …

Don’t you miss the days when graffiti had something to say?

During and since the Covid lockdowns, much of Melbourne has been covered in graffiti. Most of it is indecipherable tags, where the only message is comprehensible to the purported artists and like minded morons of their subculture. [I make no apologies for my views on these vandals.] As a result, given that our Premier is …

Facebook’s AI is not ready to take over the World – yet

It’s been one week since I made the dubious decision to finally join Facebook – a decision which immediately caused me to have my account ‘temporarily suspended’ presumably by an AI. Despite this suspension, I have been able to log into that account via the mobile phone through which I set up the account. It …

The Imminent and Indirect Remutualisation of IOOF

After the Banking Royal Commission made its report in the not so distant past, I read several of the books published by finance journalists with morbid curiosity. The way that major banks and leading financial institutions had behaved, particularly to honest business loan holders and to trusting mum & dad investors, showed a degree of …

Sometimes, you do need to be Italian to really ‘get’ Italian literature

My god daughter is having her 8th birthday this weekend, and so I am loading her up with chapter books so she can become more proficient at reading. I doubt that the Muddle Headed Wombat I ordered will arrive in time, and I realised when I re-read Paddington Bear a few years ago that the …

Joining Facebook – An Inauspicious Start

Readers of this blog who scroll far enough into the deep recesses four years ago when I set it up will know that I have no fondness for Facebook and that this blog was originally set up as an alternative way for me to share my travel adventures from my 2019 trip to Italy. That …