I'm old enough to know that I don't have any answers, but that won't stop me talking
I normally don’t go in for ad hominem attacks on people, but there is a whole lot about our state premier to dislike and I think there’s something unique about his use of his hands to express himself.
Besides, it’s funny.
This week, the share market officially entered a bear market. I am not surprised. Up to last Monday, I had lost 10% of the value of my portfolio since January, thanks to Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine. Now… I am down another 10%.
I do have to keep a sense of humour about this. After all, losing value in my share portfolio is not as bad as living in the Ukraine right now or having Putin as one’s political leader.
And I think that, after all that has happened in the past few years, selling off my entire portfolio now would not be a wise idea. December was a good time to leave – and if I could predict the future, I would be winning Powerball tomorrow night.
Ok… the five weeks that Broo Ltd has been in suspension from trading on the ASX has not really taught me much of a lesson about investing in small craft breweries and the like, and I am still keen to try it if the right opportunity comes up.
A friend of mine knows the owners of Bakery Hill, a distillery making high quality whisky in suburban Melbourne (despite the name being a famous location in Ballarat). He told me last week that they are looking for investors.
I followed the link he sent me to a site http://www.birchal.com which serves as a platform for all sorts of businesses to seek investors via crowd funding so as to grow their business.
Not only was Bakery Hill there, but also Bridge Road Brewery Heathcote, current open for expressions of interest in investing.
And this crowd funding platform allows people to potentially invest far less money than what you might put into a IPO for an ASX listing (I did dodge a bullet big time on the Broo IPO 6 years ago after all!).
So it does look not only like a fascinating way to see what companies are out there seeking investors, but a fun way to invest. I do not mind losing a few hundred dollars if something goes pear shaped, and if I already know of a brand, it is probably because I have seen it in a licensed premise and possibly drank it before.
Almost three decades ago, a close friend of mine did a road trip up to Mildura with one principal goal in mind – to visit the Mildura Working Man’s Club and see the longest bar in the world.
Well… I was in Mildura last weekend and I did visit the Club, although I was well aware that the longest bar in the world got removed when they did some renovations in 1995. The above illustration is a photo I took of one of the walls in the Club, which serves as a constant reminder of that long gone bar.
Which does get me thinking about a lot of bars which have disappeared due to developers or lost their souls due to renovations. The old fashioned Australian pub – frequently known as ‘a country pub in the city’ has mostly disappeared.
Many are still there, minus what made them special. Poker machines in what used to be the saloon bar and TAB sub outlets in the public bar do tend to rip the soul out of a pub, and those pubs which don’t have those, but which tear out all the old fittings (or even the 1970s era maroon sticky carpets and vinyl coated chairs and tables) to go upmarket are not much better.
This does sadden me. Around Footscray, for example, where my memory of pubs is very accurate and covers those both extant and extinct going back the past five decades, the only pub which survives and remains true to its ‘authentic’ self is the Footscray Hotel. This is an old fashioned bogan pub, complete with sticky carpet and bogan regulars. I love visiting it. I am not so keen on the Courthouse Hotel in Nicholson Street – it has its bogan regulars, but also a TAB and lots of pokies.
The news that the Great Western in King Street is closing for good, to be part of a major redevelopment is sad news, even though it will reopen as part of that redevelopment. It was, for a long time, one of the last remnants of the old school pub in central Melbourne (the Waterside has gone upmarket, and the Elms is now only a facade). It apparently even still had a water well as part of its history – a legacy of the days before a regular water supply in Melbourne.
I have not yet been to the corner of King and Lonsdale Street since the news of the fire gutting Goldfingers. Whilst this is well known as a pole dancing venue in recent years, I have some fond (and not so fond) memories of it when it was the Kilkenny Inn, back in the mid 1990s. It was there that I learned that drinking even two stubbies of Subzero (an alcoholic soda drink happily now long gone) was a sure fire way to get heartburn the next day.
Whilst it has changed (and will continue to change) a lot since I first drank there at age 18 in 1987, Young & Jacksons remains in its character and general atmosphere, the same pub it always has been. Similarly, the Mitre Tavern (complete with its tiles with corny limericks in the toilets) seems unchanged for at least the past 40 years. And the Imperial (God bless it) seems to survive despite regular renovation, character and clientele intact.
Almost everywhere else, there is change, and usually not for the better. I do miss the old school pubs.
Given that I vehemently dislike soccer and consider Australian Rules Football to be a vastly superior sport, I will feel it my patriotic duty to rejoice when the Socceroos fail to make the World Cup.
The only smart decision that they could make, which might drum up support here in Australia, is for them to announce an immediate boycott of the Qatar tournament in protest at the Qatar airport incident and the general human rights situation there.
But the slim hope of international mediocrity beckons, so they will play on to perdition.
Hopefully the rest of the nation turns its back on this sport and reaffirms its support for true football (AFL) and all the other worthy Australian sports.
In 1944, wealthy local newspaper owner RF Elliot left his large art collection to the Mildura council, on the provision that they came up with a building to serve as an art gallery to display his collection.
I know this because yesterday, having an idle hour after visiting the Sunraysia Cellar Door, I decided to visit the Mildura Arts Centre and see the galllery.
Apparently there were 175 artworks in the Elliot collection bequeathed to the local community and that many of them were coveted by galleries all over the country.
I don’t know for sure, because none of the pieces in the Elliot collection were on display. Instead, there were a large number of contemporary works, a minority of which were interesting and aesthetically pleasing, but the majority of which were at best risable.
There were some drawings which, at first glance, appeared to be blu-tacked to the wall.
I have never really thought what wokeness in Art really means but I now have worked it out.
When you are a parent and your four year old scribbles something in crayon at Kindy, you stick it on the fridge and tell them they are very clever and you are proud of them. That’s natural for parents to do.
When you are not a parent but curate an art gallery and you are faced with the scribbles of some over indulged adult brat who believes or pretends that they are artistically gifted, and you validate their lack of talent by sticking their art on the wall of a public gallery in the name of inclusiveness or artistic interpretation…. Well that’s wokeness.
The first woke artist was the emperor Nero, but art critics in his day had no choice but to praise him – or face the lions.
These days, instead of lions we have a woke group think where art critics do not want to be found out for the lacks of knowledge in their chosen subjective field that they have, so they will indulge any pretentious fake and spoilt brat who claims to have artist talent.
And where is the Elliot collection? That’s what I’d like to know.
So… I’ve come up to Mildura for a few days and have just ventured out of my hotel in search of dinner.
Given that I’m in town, I thought I’d pop into the Mildura Brewery, which is owned by Broo, whom I’ve been writing about on this blog recently.
A sign on the door says that it is temporarily closed. Struck up a conversation at the bar at the Corporate Moose just a few doors down and it transpires it closed on Tuesday.
Broo’s shares are still in suspension from trading pending a company restructuring announcement, so I am pretty curious as to what happens next for this noble craft brewing enterprise.
About a decade ago, my best friend invited me along to one of his family functions, at which event his rather bogan brother-in-law totally surprised me.
It turns out that this bloke is quite the connoisseur when it comes to craft beer, and was in the habit of visiting many micro breweries around suburban Melbourne and regional Victoria (wife in tow as designated driver of course) to sample their wares.
This did quite take me aback, as this is the sort of fellow who, earlier in life and in previous generations, would have stayed completely loyal to one particular brand of beer – most likely a Carlton United Breweries product like Carlton Draught, Victoria Bitter, or Fosters Lager (oh for the days when that was widely sold in Melbourne).
As it was just after I had received my first twenty shares in Broo as a direct consequence of buying two slabs as part of a special promotion, I was rather interested in his opinion of Broo.
He was not enthusiastic. I do not remember exactly what he said, but he had tried it once, and he was not going to ever try it again.
This was useful market research on my part, as a sort-of investor in Broo, and might have partly informed my decision not to participate in the Broo IPO in 2016, when the punters could buy shares in the soon to get listed beer company for 20 cents each.
I have been paying closer attention to Broo in recent weeks, as readers of this blog might aver, given that there have been changes at the helm of the company.
The most recent changes, after an amicable (?) deal was reached to see the company founder and his close allies leave the board quietly, have been to abandon the long delayed deal to sell the Ballarat brewery site, and a suspension of trading on the ASX pending an announcement on a company restructure.
Monday will be three weeks since the initial trading halt, which was followed by a more formal suspension pending the restructure announcement, which was meant to be forthcoming by Friday 13th May.
No announcements have been made, and the shares remain suspended from trading.
I have speculated previously as to what the real value of Broo is, and what the directors could do with the assets of the company. Sad to say, I have little faith in the company’s short term viability, let alone its prospects for long term success.
My predictions are that they will terminate the bulk production of beer via their contract with CUB, and take steps to wind down the company, perhaps keeping beer production going at the Mildura Brewpub, pending the sale of that asset.
The main assets – the Mildura Brewpub and the land in Ballarat – are only worth about $3-4 million, and I am not sure that the Broo brand and recipes have any inherent value.
I hope I am wrong, as I feel a little sentimental about Broo.
I will be travelling to Mildura on Thursday, so I am really curious to see what this much vaunted Mildura Brewpub is like (if in fact it is still up and running), and to drink some Broo beer for the first time in over 10 years.
The Hon Bernie Finn MLC, my longstanding upper house state Liberal MP, got expelled this week from the state parliamentary Liberal Party.
Ostensibly, his recent social media utterances about potential US Supreme Court developments on the issue of reversing long standing case law (Roe Vs Wade) on abortion were the last straw for the state parliamentary Liberal Party, and they decided to expel him rather than continue to put up with his peculiarities leading up to the state election in 6 months time.
Abortion is a very serious issue, and I will not trivialise it by discussing it here. Most people who take either a pro-life or a pro-choice position are cautious and moderate about it, and it is only the extremists on either side who are going to foam at the mouth about it.
I do not believe that Bernie Finn was expelled this week because he was foaming (or drooling) at the mouth about this particular issue, although I am quite certain that he probably was.
I have, in recent years, read about many of his peculiarities, and how he has been tolerated for them, over an over-extended career as a rather underwhelming parliamentarian.
Suddenly, late in his fourth term as an upper house MP, his colleagues have finally had enough of him and decided that he is no longer fit to be in their company.
Why now?
There is a particular matter which occurred at Easter 2018, which cast doubt on both his probity and honour, and that of the then leadership of the State Opposition. There was a tight vote on a particular bill, and the Legislative Council was (from memory) going to sit and debate and vote on that bill on Good Friday.
Bernie Finn, claiming to be a good Catholic, sought a pairing with a government MP so that he could excuse himself from attending (this is a Gentleman’s agreement common to the Westminster system where people from either side are able to not attend parliament and not disadvantage their side by having the other side agree to recuse one of their own members from attending and voting).
However, Bernie Finn hid out in his office, and then, when the divisions were called, sneakily returned to the Legislative Council and voted, regardless of his pairing arrangement. Reneging on his pairing agreement in this way is at best dishonest, and at worst, highly dishonourable, and an undermining of the democratic conventions of the Westminster system.
But it is not just Bernie Finn’s honour which was besmirched by his actions. At that time, Matthew Guy was Opposition Leader. Guy did nothing to sanction Finn for this conduct at that time – conduct that was far worse then than Finn’s current pathetic and dogmatic tweets in support of anti-abortion laws (tweets which I do think show a lack of empathy towards the unfortunate people who actually find themselves in the position of having to decide whether to seek abortion – not a problem Finn himself will ever be in).
Why did Matthew Guy not denounce Bernie Finn then, at Easter 2018, for his dishonourable conduct? That he did not, and that he accepted Finn’s vote in the Legislative Council then, casts significant doubt right now on Matthew Guy’s actions in expelling Bernie Finn this week.
Accepting dishonourable conduct at that time makes Matthew Guy, by association, dishonourable. Expelling Bernie Finn now, instead of four years ago when he proved himself a disgrace to the good name of Victorian Liberals, renders Matthew Guy a hypocrite, a cad, and a blackguard.
Lost For Words!