I'm old enough to know that I don't have any answers, but that won't stop me talking
This year, the second of the plague, I think the end (for now) of our lockdown has left people needing to cheer themselves up a bit. Which is why Halloween seems to have been celebrated a little more fully, even though it is a uniquely American tradition whose import to Australia still seems rather bizarre …
Continue reading “This year, people probably do need Halloween”
I never cease to be grateful for living in Australia, rather than anywhere else, even in a time of plague. Americans might love their right to bear arms and all the rest of that, but just like in old school Westerns, the police do shoot back, and with very heavy firepower. Also, their police, for …
Continue reading “Being Grateful for First World Problems in a Time of Plague”
In the recently concluded second season of Ted Lasso, a number of serious issues are covered by this otherwise amiable show. One is ‘Sports Washing’. Sports Washing is the practice, by a nation or a corporation, of sponsoring a sporting team or competition in order to distract attention from either human rights abuses by a …
Continue reading “Collingwood Football Club’s Complicity in Sports Washing”
My friends will know that I am a great fan of Shakespeare’s plays, which I do allude to from time to time in this blog. I believe that in them, particularly the various tragedies, you can find the questions which comprise most of the great dilemmas which we as humans face. The great villains are …
The Scarlet Pimpernel is quite an enjoyable novel. It’s hero is mischievous, idealistic, and uncatchable. He spends the whole novel tormenting the villainous Jacobin zealots and saving their victims from the Guillotine. I see some parallels between The Scarlet Pimpernel and Real Freedom News, an insider website revealing a lot of the factional machinations of …
I am sure that the puritanical prig Oliver Cromwell meant well when he organised the regicide of Charles I. Many tyrants do when they start on their path to untrammelled power. In 1648, the Long Parliament stood in the way. Many of its members, more than a majority, were reluctant to put Charles I on …
Continue reading “Chairman Dan’s Latest Affront To Democracy”
It is for good reason that I love Melbourne, formerly known as the World’s Most Liveable City. We have the world’s largest tram network (who does not love trams?), clean air and water, a reliable power grid and sewerage network, lots of parks and gardens, respected universities, a cosmopolitan atmosphere, and of course 9 of …
Continue reading “Melbourne: from most liveable to most lockable city in the world”
In his 1927 essay La Trahison Des Clercs, French writer Julien Benda deplored the dogmatism of public intellectuals, who had lost the ability to reason dispassionately about politics. Almost a century on, what would he have to say about current so-called public intellectuals, whose utterances are mostly reduced to smug and condescending tweets, intended to …
You could say that the Liberal-Conservative (ie non-collectivist / anti socialist) Right in Australia is a very broad church, one which has a lot in common with any cathedral in Naples. That is, it is big, rundown, lacking in the money to maintain it, has a very leaky roof, and lacks enthusiasm from its parishioners. …
Lost For Words!