Recently we here in the west have been treated to some exciting TV footage of rioting kids battling the thin blue line (as the talkback jocks like to call it) on hot summer nights. First there was the bloody running battle involving the cops and some hundreds of kids […] Continue Reading…

How amusing to see the government getting so concerned about the future of Oz’s population all of a sudden. Apparently, they have found out about this thing called ‘demography’ and are now all excited about it. “Demography is destiny” is the latest catch phrase, as if it was all […] Continue Reading…

I have not seen Mel Gibson’s film about Jesus, and I don’t intend to. An interpretation of one of the great narratives of history by a Hollywood movie star just does not attract me.
I have heard some commentary here and there. People are appalled by the violence, but of […] Continue Reading…

John Kerry looks all set to win the Democrat nomination for presidential candidate, but some problems are emerging for him. Indeed, he may have already peaked. Kerry did it so easily, especially in upsetting the early favourite Howard Dean, that some commentators think he is getting it too easy […] Continue Reading…

It was a pretty ordinary 4 Corners this week on bank robberies – too much trying to get the victims crying, too little evidence and analysis (ah, standards are dropping at the ABC) – but it is interesting to see a serious debate on violence emerging in Oz. Violence, […] Continue Reading…

There used to be a lot more point breaks for surfing on the Gold Coast than there are now.
When I grew up as a kid listening to storms belt against the unsealed tin roof on the front verandah of our holiday shack at Currumbin we worried that the […] Continue Reading…

I’ve been reading about Nazi Germany and what can happen if democracy fails. In a few short years the country many would have said was the most civilised in the world became one of the most barbaric.
One argument was that Democracy had not properly taken hold in Germany, and […] Continue Reading…

Graham’s blog entry on the extreme weather is clearly right in terms of the facts, but I think there are valuable lessons we should take from it anyway.
We seem to get the weather here in Perth before it heads east, at least in the summer, so we enjoyed the […] Continue Reading…

According to Dad, in 1925 my grandmother sat on the back stairs of the workers cottage in East Brisbane where he still lives and said to my great grandmother – “Maybe they should just leave this land to the blacks.”
[…] Continue Reading…

I’ve been enjoying the new doco ‘Wild Australasia” on the ABC. The commentary is pretty banal and Matt Day’s reading is ordinary, and of course it is loaded with the usual stupid terms designed, I assume, to pander to overseas assumptions about Oz. But it does a good job […] Continue Reading…