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Narrow Minded Italian Catholic Conservative Peasant From Footscray

The prompts from the blog platform suggest that I introduce myself.

In short, I am several things.

Firstly, I am a Narrow Minded Italian Catholic Conservative Peasant From Footscray. I have been describing myself as that for at least the past 15 years or so.

This description might not be totally accurate.

I am probably not as narrow minded as I boast I am.

Whilst I am of Italian ancestry and reasonably fluent in Italian, I probably think more the iconoclastic way that Australians do, having been born and lived in Australia my whole life.

Nor am I particularly observant religiously, although like most people, 1600 years of Christianity being the dominant religion (‘thank you’ Emperor Theodosius) in Western Civilisation does tend to hard wire us in a particular way. (I do like to amuse myself by claiming that the dinosaurs missed the ark and that the world is just over 6000 years old.).

Peasant? Well, my parents are from peasant stock, as probably most Italian migrants in the 1950s were, and I like growing my own tomatoes in the backyard. But I am a lower middle class office worker really, with the luxury of participating in a post industrial economy. I also have a university education, and not in agriculture.

Whilst I am very personally Conservative, both culturally and socially, I am more Liberal than Conservative, and believe in individual rights and liberties and freedom of choice and conscience etc to the point where I can get quite worked up when I hear of proposals to intervene in the lives of people or to curtail our freedoms.

I also don’t live in Footscray, although I was born there (and proud of it), and lived and went to school there during my childhood and adolescence, and the Western Bulldogs (formerly known as the Footscray Football Club) is my AFL team. I do not live too far from Footscray though. I am in Avondale Heights, which is like a north western outpost of Footscray, and previously lived in Maribyrnong. But just like people from Fremantle claim that they are from Fremantle rather than from Perth, real Footscray people claim that they are from Footscray rather than from Melbourne. I suppose, historically, that it has something to do with the fact that there is quite a distance between the eastern boundary of Footscray at the Maribyrnong River, and the centre of Melbourne, and most of that two mile distance was occupied firstly by a swamp and then by a wasteland involving docks, chemical depots (where were you during the Coode Island fire in 1991?) and quarantine grounds….

Secondly, I am a postgrad dropout. That does contradict a lot of what my first description suggests I am, but we all are complex and many layered people. The MA thesis I was planning to write was about Nietzsche, Hegel and the End of History or some such, which is the sort of topic which would have been pretty passe in 1994 when I was interested in doing it. However, life gets in the way – working full time and getting a promotion at work which resulted in me focusing my energies and attention on my job meant that I did not have much left in the tank for a 30,000 word thesis. And whilst I still enjoy reading Nietzsche for his manic and frenetic style, Hegel is really boring.

As for more? I much prefer the writings of Anthony Trollope over Charles Dickens. I still enjoy re-reading my favourite Nevil Shute novels, and I occasionally re-read my copy of JRR Tolkien. I did ditch Game of Thrones about 100 pages into the first book, and don’t regret it at all. I remain very curious as to whether some of the unpublished novels of JD Salinger from his period of seclusion (I have the general impression he wrote some) will see the light of day during my lifetime, although I loathed Catcher in the Rye whilst finding his short stories fascinating.

The Misuse Of ‘Fortunate Son’

I was watching Die Hard 4.0 yesterday, the one where Detective John McLane takes on cyber terrorists. He does not start getting really violent until after his first phone conversation with the chief villain. In that conversation, he is informed that his 401K account (ie his superannuation fund) has just been wiped out. Immediately after that, he more or less knocks down a helicopter with his bare hands.

I too would be extremely angry if someone did something to my retirement fund, particularly as I am enjoying my defined benefit pension (with 2.1% increase this coming Thursday) right now.

Die Hard 4.0 featured the Vietnam War era protest song ‘Fortunate Son’ prominently, both during one early scene, and during the end credits.

I have been hearing ‘Fortunate Son’ a fair bit in the past couple of days, mostly over Facebook clips celebrating the American incursion into Venezuela to capture the dictator Maduro.

Which does not really seem the right context for playing ‘Fortunate Son’.

Credence Clearwater Revival’s John Fogarty wrote ‘Fortunate Son’ in 1969 in a fit of rage about how the poor and unprivileged were being conscripted to fight in the Vietnam War, whilst those who were sons of powerful fathers were able to avoid that morass. He had one particular fortunate son in mind: David Eisenhower, who was both the grandson of former President Eisenhower and son-in-law of President Nixon. Eisenhower grandfils had been able to avoid conscription by serving as an officer in the Naval Reserve for several years – a far safer path of service than that forced upon sons of poorer and powerless families.

I suppose that, in the course of the intervening 56 years, ‘Fortunate Son’ has become part of the soundtrack of the Vietnam War, featured in movies and TV shows about that conflict, and through that, it has been distorted from a cri-de-cour protest song into a theme song for action scenes.

Which leads us to the present day, where Facebook trolls are posting pro-Trumpist celebratory clips about the Maduro intervention with ‘Fortunate Son’ playing loudly as the backing track.

I guess it could be worse. Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lot Of Love’ used to be played loudly on speakers as US armoured units drove through the Vietnamese jungle – something which I suspect inspired the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ helicopter assault scene in ‘Apocalypse Now’….

The Problem With American Eagle

For some reason, I am never really relaxed unless I am wearing blue jeans. I own a couple of pairs of black jeans sure, but I don’t feel as relaxed in them – I tend to wear those with a business shirt and blazer on occasions where I need to dress smart casual.

My main trousers of choice are Levi 516s, in what I supposed is usually called a straight fit. I have been wearing those for quite a long time, although I also own a couple of pairs of 501s.

When there is a rip in my jeans, I immediately toss them out and buy a new pair.

This happened on the weekend, when I found a tear along the seam of the seat of a pair of Levis. I tossed them out and headed off to Highpoint West to buy a replacement.

Whilst Levis are my usual choice, I decided to try American Eagle for a change.

Six months or so ago, I had not heard of American Eagle. But then all the crazies connected to Cancel Culture decided to go nuts over an advertising campaign featuring the delectable Sydney Sweeney, currently considered the sexiest woman on the planet (she might well be) by many.

You’ve probably heard about the campaign slogan: Sydney Sweeney has great jeans. All sorts of hysteria was generated by woke and foolish people about alleged hidden means and racism.

Some people probably also complained that featuring a beautiful woman to promote jeans is discriminatory towards the more ordinary or pudgy looking of us, or that it possibly involved a subliminally eugenic agenda. Maybe, maybe not. The hysteria and stupidity of the echo chamber which is contemporary social media knows no limits.

So anywho, I decided to pop into Myers and browse the American Eagle display.

That is where I encountered a problem. Virtually all of the jeans were a maximum of size 32. I’ve spent most of my adult life at size 36 (although one of my pairs of suit trousers doesn’t fit me anymore, and it involves a lot of inhaling to get my dinner suit trousers on the two times per year I attend black tie events).

There was only one option for me – size 36 in baggy style.

I must say, it is very comfortable, but it really doesn’t look that great.

I probably will give American Eagle another try next time I buy a pair of jeans, but where slightly overweight middle aged men like me can’t find the style of jeans we are accustomed to wearing, then I might have to stick to Levis.

That, friends, is a first world problem.

Has 20-20 Ruined Test Cricket?

Let me preface this by saying that my interest in cricket is pretty limited. I occasionally used to watch it on the TV (when I had a TV, which is now a long time past), particularly if the tail was wagging on an otherwise lost innings, and every few years I go to a day of the Boxing Day Test with a friend or two, mostly as a social thing.

At such events, we will drink much beer and try to endure the heat as best we can, it being summer.

It was my turn in the beer queue yesterday at the MCG around 1pm or so when I mentioned to the bloke standing behind me: ‘I think we will have an outcome today.’

His reply was: ‘I feel sorry for my dad – he has tickets for tomorrow.’

Yesterday being day two of what ostensibly is a five day test match.

I was right. The game ended when an English batsman hit a four around 5.30pm, taking England past the 175 run target it needed to defeat Australia.

That an outcome was likely was obvious to everyone, even those like me who do not have great love for the World Game (I annoy fans of soccer when I describe cricket thus), several hours before the eventual conclusion.

I am not too familiar with what conditions cause a wicket to be particularly favourable to bowlers, but when the first two innings end on day one with both teams bowled out, you might have to conclude that it was very much a bowler’s wicket.

What I could observe is that the weather (a maximum of 21 degrees celsius) was quite mild and pleasant – which might have impacted adversely on beer sales. Mild weather also means that when a team is out on the field rather than batting, they do not get as exhausted as they would when the day is sweltering hot, as when I last watched the Boxing Day Test a few years ago when South Africa toured.

On that particular occasion, Australia batted until tea time, giving the South African team enough time to get exhausted on the field, before declaring and sending them in to bat and to get slaughtered by our very fresh bowlers, who had spent the day resting up in the airconditioned comfort of their dressing rooms, spared by the declaration from the inconvenience of having to bat in such warm weather.

Mild weather levels the playing field in favour of the team that is bowling.

It also means that the game can move much more quickly.

But that the wickets fell so quickly that a test match ended within two days rather than five, and not for the first time in this series (the First Test also ended in two days, but with Australia winning), did make me wonder. This is very unusual.

It has gotten even me thinking about why it is so.

Commentators for many years have speculated as to whether One Day Cricket (a version of the game where each team faces 50 overs) was influencing the way that cricketers were playing in Test matches, particularly if they were more likely to go for reckless high scoring shots whilst batting. Limited overs requires fast scoring and taking more risks than the more strategic and cautious approach needed for a Test match.

Recent years has seen the introduction of an even shorter and faster version of the game – 20-20 cricket, in the form of the Big Bash league in Australia and more significantly in the Indian Premier League. Most of the world’s best cricketers of every nation play for part of the year in the Indian Premier League. It is fast and exciting (as much as cricket can get) and very lucrative for the players.

I firmly believe that there is a direct causality between this current failure of Test matches to last out their entire five day duration and the participation of most top international players in the 20-20 competition as a regular part of their top level careers.

Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed my day out yesterday, even though I was sitting in the Southern Stand which is rather too cramped for comfort compared to the Members’ Reserve (making me regret that I did not ask for favours 30 years ago to get onto the MCC waiting list). The weather was very pleasant, the game went at a great and engaging pace, and the Barmy Army was appropriately… Barmy. So did 92,000 other people, and 95,000 on Boxing Day – the crowds do love to turn out at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for an Ashes Test.

But this was not Cricket – or at least not Test Cricket as we know it.

There are people who were planning to go on Days 3, 4 and hopefully 5. Those days will not be happening, and Cricket Australia will suffer a financial hit, as will the casual staff who otherwise would be selling overpriced beer and snack foods to people like yours truly. The same happened in the First Test, which was similarly a two day watershed but with the Australians winning.

I suspect that this might be a turning point in the sport. Where Test matches start to regularly end less than halfway through due to the way they are played, rather than abandoned due to the weather (as sometimes happens where there is unseasonably heavy rain), this will have an ongoing financial impact on the game. That will cause the governing bodies of international cricket to take notice.

There possibly will be two avenues of action. One could be to limit the ability of Test cricketers to participate in 20-20 and other limited over cricket. The other would be to downplay the importance of Test cricket and reduce the number of Test matches are played, in order to reduce the exposure to possible financial losses.

I am curious to see what transpires.

A Revival Of The Melbourne Pub Scene?

One of my minor regrets is that I have never set foot in a lot of the now long gone pubs which used to occupy the Melbourne CBD and surrounds, particularly those which were still around when I first came of drinking age, or that if I have, it was a singular visit and I have little memory of it.

The Stork Hotel near the Vic Market – never set foot in it at all. That other place on Victoria Street which until recently was a La Porchetta restaurant – only time I went in there was in 1995 when it had already been converted to a pizza joint. Mac’s Hotel on the corner of Spring and Flinders – I think I went in there once, into a side bar with framed photos of Fitzroy Football Club teams from the days of yore. Kilkenny Inn – before it became Goldfinger’s – an evening playing pool and sipping Subzero (a long since extinct and unlamented alcoholic soda which I regretted when the extreme heartburn hit the next morning). The Phoenix on Flinders Street – one office Christmas party circa 2007, not long before it got demolished and replaced by a very skinny apartment tower. The Lord Cecil on Queen and Lonsdale – that disappeared in late 1988 and I had never been inclined to stop in there for a quiet ale before that occurred.

The Royal Mail in Spencer Street – currently closed and apparently has structural issues.

Well… you get the picture.

King Street alone has several former pubs – the Kilkenny is a shell following a fire, and the Great Western is a facade with an apartment tower rising behind it (and I was fond of the Great Western with all its authentic bogan charm).

Which brings me to the Waterside.

Between 1991 and 1996 I worked in an office building in King Street, a short walk up from the Waterside. Originally myself and the other younger staff did not go there, as we preferred the Grainstore, a tavern which had been converted from an old Gold Rush era warehouse with a blue stone facade. That changed when the ownership of the Grainstore turned over and the new owners ran the place into the ground.

Back then, the Waterside was very much the same as it had been since the 1930s – tiles up to shoulder height inside and out, so as to easily hose off the vomit from when the regulars left after the six o’clock swill. There was a small bistro to one side which had leadlight on the doors and which served $2 steak sandwiches. The place had a lot of other vintage fittings.

That changed in the late 1990s when it got renovated and opened up, losing all its vintage fittings and becoming a much higher capacity venue.

It closed again in 2019, for renovations. As it transpired, structural issues arising from it being built mere metres from the Yarra (it was not called the Waterside without good reason) meant it needed more than a refresh. It needed to be knocked down entirely and rebuilt, with only the facade of the old building remaining.

I do not know how much this would have cost, but I assume it would have been tens of millions.

Now, last month, it finally reopened, so, in memory of the old days, I went there with a friend for lunch and to sip a few ales.

What exists now is very different. It has been opened up on the inside, with the main bar area overlooked by areas on several upper levels, the entire building now being seven stories tall.

We speculated as to where, in this post Covid work from home era, the clientele would come from to fill this pub and to pay off the bankers. After all, this might be the commercial office end of town, but the suits don’t drink like they used to in public, and most people try to stay at home most of the time. Nor are any wharfies employed near this location anymore. My observation is that it is the closest pub to Crown Casino (there used to be one adjacent to it, but that has been redeveloped long since), and that Crown did not like it when off duty staff stuck around to drink in the various bars of the Casino.

Waterside is not the only pub to recently reopen after a redevelopment or major renovation. I spent Cup Day inside Hickens Hotel on Russell Street with some friends. Hickens is the newly restored historical name for a pub which, in the course of my adult life, has been known as Santa Fe (pub before becoming a table dancing venue in the 1990s), Portland Hotel, and James Squire Brewhouse.

The amount of room for customers in the latter two manifestations was limited. The renovation includes opening up extra bar capacity on the ground floor, a giant sports bar area on the first floor, and a rooftop bar.

Similarly, just prior to the Covid, the Imperial on the corner of Bourke and Spring (a pub I long considered my regular due to proximity to my office), converted its function area upstairs into additional bar space, discovered an outdoor courtyard on the first floor as a smoking area, and installed a rooftop bar.

When the Duke of Wellington was renovated a decade or so ago, in order to free up room for an apartment tower, additional space was freed up for bar patrons in the form of a bistro and an upstairs bar area.

And then we get to Young and Jacksons, Melbourne’s most iconic pub. It opened a rooftop bar a decade ago, to supplement all the existing capacity.

The moral of the story seems to be that whilst we have lost a lot of pubs from the centre of our city, those that remain appear to be making the use of their existing footprint to become bigger venues – hopefully also better venues.

Mind you – I hope that the Exford remains as it is, and that no one thinks of doing anything different to the Mitre Tavern.

Some Early Reflections On Nuisance Calls

At the end of June this year, several weeks after I had added my mobile phone number to the Do Not Call Register maintained by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), I started a spreadsheet where I record all the nuisance calls I now receive.

Ultimately, at the end of this coming June, I plan to send those numbers to the ACMA and hope that they take some action against those account holders.

Whilst recording the two latest nuisance callers onto my spreadsheet just now, I noticed a pattern emerging in terms of the non-landline numbers inflicting themselves on me.

I will share those with you now:

0485-961-598 Solar Panel pitch

0480-852-242 Hung up when I answered

0485-962-123 Call about electricity providers

0485-837-704 Health Insurance comparisons

0485-837-539 Solar Panel pitch

You can see some patterns there – most of the numbers start with 0485, and the one outlier starts with 0480. Two of the numbers start with 0485-837.

Which suggests these are all part of one big block of phone numbers which have been sold to those telemarketing call centres which operate in violation of relevant consumer law protections.

In terms of landlines, I have received nine calls from numbers which start with 03-9022 – one of those calls was a solar panel pitch, another was a cleaning services pitch, and the other seven all hung up when I answered.

So the takeaway from all this so far is that you should not answer calls from those numbers, and I do hope that when I provide my spreadsheet to both the ACMA and Telstra in mid 2026, one or other or both of those bodies takes action against these sacred cowboy call centre operators.

In the meantime, if you are so inclined, feel free to call those mobile numbers above to enquire about their services. If enough people do that, it might give them some mild annoyance, which they richly deserve.

But… as I found out to my lasting regret when, last year in a very benevolent mood, I actually agreed to get solar panels installed by one such company who rang me on spec like that, don’t actually agree to any services from them. They will do a half-arsed job.

A Quick Look Through Footscray Shopping Centre

My mother wanted her hair cut last week, so I accompanied her on the bus to Footscray, to attend the Vietnamese hairdresser in the Footscray Market.

Footscray has changed a lot since I was a kid, so I did a bit of reminiscing whilst I waited for her.

Describing Footscray to outsiders might help make it seem more intriguing, so perhaps more people might come and visit.

Leeds Street was the first part of Footscray to turn Vietnamese, in 1981. There were two Vietnamese jewellery shops which opened up – one in the Footscray Market on the Leeds street frontage, and one on the other side of the street. The one in the Market is still there, although I am not sure as to when it is open as I have never seen it thus in recent years. The other one has since closed. Quickly after that, the rest of Leeds Street was filled up with other Vietnamese shops and then, by the late 1980s, Vietnamese restaurants replaced the moribund Italian cafes (apparently hives of the newly booming heroin trade) in Hopkins Street opposite the market. The only remnant of the former Italian presence is Cavallaro, the cake shop which has been there for almost 70 years.

There are a lot of Vietnamese restaurants still there in Hopkins Street, although Hy Hy, the first generation restaurant I used to enjoy visiting 25 years ago, has been gone for at least 15 years, replaced by fancier next gen establishments which might be more swish, but seem less yummy to me (sorry folks, I like sizzling beef with plum sauce and I hate that I can’t get it anymore).

I would say when looking at Footscray Shopping Centre now that the Vietnamese precinct is more or less restricted to Leeds Street and Hopkins. A lot of businesses have apparently moved further west, to Sunshine or St Albans. (I rarely visit St Albans anymore – I don’t have family there these days, and I don’t currently have any friends in Sunshine, so I can’t really comment at great length on those suburbs.)

The rest of the main shopping area, Nicholson Street and Barkly Street, and the non-medical part of Paisley Street, is now an African precinct, although it is peppered with hipster bars and abundant kebab shops. At one point, about 14 years ago when I was at the height of my mania for Ethiopian food, I has tried just about each and every Ethiopian restaurant in Footscray, and knew the owners of several by name.

Some are still there, and some new ones have opened, but the ones I enjoyed most are now long gone. I miss them, but I do have an Ethiopian restaurant a little more accessible to me in Maribyrnong Road which I can frequent more easily.

A lot of the pubs of Footscray are gone, or going, or replaced with hipster bars. Between the Plough (early convert to gastro pub) on the Geelong Road corner, and the Footscray Hotel (whose days, I suspect are very limited) just after the newly converted Moon Dog Brewery (a giant rodeo beer barn), there are a huge number of bars along Barkly Street – Slough, Josephine, Little Foot, Cheeky Pint, just off the top of my head. But I miss some of the pubs – the Barkly and the Royal are redeveloped facades. The Bayview was flattened almost 40 years ago, as was more recently the Belgravia on the corner of Nicholson and Buckley. The Courthouse is business as usual, poker machines and pub TAB, much as it has been for the past 30 years, at the south end of what used to be the bottom half of the original mall area.

When I meet my friends to eat these days, it is either opposite the Town Hall at the Station Hotel, which has a good steak house, or for yum cha at Golden Horse, at the Leeds and Barkly Street corner of the Market.

There are still lots of worthwhile places in Footscray to visit, although I mostly will avoid the problem area which is Nicholson Street, and you will not catch me there after dark any longer than it will take for me to find a taxi.

Posh Spice Officially Becomes A Lady

It’s now almost 30 years since the Spice Girls burst onto the pop scene with Wannabe, their debut single. They did not go by their nicknames Ginger, Baby, Scary, Sporty, and of course, Posh at that time. The media quickly gave them those monikers.

At the end of Wannabe, they introduce themselves by their Christian names, and when Victoria is named, they sing that she is a lad-ie.

Victoria Adams, the artist soon to be known to the world as Posh Spice, did not actually sing on Wannabe. I suppose her voice was not quite up to it in comparison to the others.

Later, after Ginger left the Spice Girls, she did finally get to sing on Wannabe.

Not that it really matters. They all made their pile of cash, and no one more than Posh Spice, who chose a husband who matched her celebrity and ability to generate cash.

With David Beckham receiving his knighthood from the King this past week, his wife, who has popularly been known as Posh Spice for almost thirty years, has now officially become a Lady, just as the Spice Girls insisted when she was introduced in that song so long ago. She is now Victoria, Lady Beckham, if you want to know how exactly to address her.

And as a Commonwealth Constitutional Monarchist, this pleases me greatly.

Suzanne Vega To Fly With Angels To Australia!

As anyone who knows me well would know, Suzanne Vega has been my favourite singer since I was 17. Kate Bush and Tori Amos come in closely behind her.

Suzanne Vega has toured Australia five times – 1987, 1993, 2008, 2014, and 2018. I was not cashed up enough for concert tickets in 1987, and I was not aware of her 2008 and 2014 concerts until it was too late.

A music reviewer did describe the 1987 concert as ‘as exciting as a Carlton – Hawthorn grand final’, which was to say that it was so perfect as to be boring. I do hope that reviewer lost their job, as obviously they had nothing sensible to say.

But I did attend her 1993 concert at what is now Hamer Hall, and her 2018 concert. The 1993 concert was in support of 99.9 Fahrenheit Degrees, her fourth studio album. Whilst it was, in my view, a weak album in comparison to her self titled debut, and her most successful second album, Solitude Standing (I still prefer the debut album), in concert there was not a weak song in the entire set.

Then, in 2018 she toured to mark the 25th anniversary of that album, and the 30th anniversary of Solitude Standing. That concert was at the Palais, and the supporting act was Deborah Conway and Willie Zygier (fun fact – I used to work with Willie Zygier’s brother).

I am more prepared in these days of ubiquitous internet. I signed up to her fan email list for updates about two years ago, and today it all came to golden fruition with an email advising that she is touring next September. I have already hopped online and bought my ticket, carefully picking an aisle seat (I like aisle seats).

Concert will be at Hamer Hall, so I think it will be a pretty good one – not stadium sized like Taylor Swift, but still a decent crowd.

It’s something to really look forward to.

Charlie’s Pizza Reopens

It is now nine months since my paesano and Footscray stalwart Charlie Morabito died. His pizzeria in Droop Street near the Ballarat Road corner has been a Footscray institution since 1974 and I was worried that it was going to close forever.

Good news! One branch of the family has taken over management of it and reopened the shop on 21 October.

My brother, who was a regular customer there late night, is quite pleased and has already resumed dining there, although the new owners are not as chatty as Charlie was.

There is not much left of the old businesses of the Footscray of my childhood, and I am relieved that this one relic of that era will survive, for a few more years at least.

The Catering Test – A Hidden Sign Of Economic Downturn

I suppose, as Honorary Secretary of a small Italian group, I probably count as an Italian community leader.

Yeah maybe. Sort of.

Last year that community involvement bore some fruits. I got an invite to a gala dinner organised by the Italian Embassy. I also had a pass to the VIP section of the Italian Festa. So some fun events there.

This year, it does not appear that the Italian government is having a gala dinner of any sort in Melbourne, and nor was there a VIP section in the Italian Festa (over the past weekend). I suppose that this was due to reduced funding from the Italian government for such activities.

Similarly, as I have written in this blog recently, the catering at the Treasury Wine Estate AGM last week was rather underwhelming compared to last week. There were hardly any canapés, and only a few trays of lamingtons as dessert.

Nor did the wine last to 1pm like last year. The fun ended at 12.30pm.

One of the more sour shareholders at that AGM did also raise a question about the number of staff parties which Treasury employees seem to hold.

Looking at these incidents all coming together at the same time, I get the feeling that probably, this year, there is less money flying about to pay for hospitality. That in itself is probably an economic indicator.