Newsletter
Newsletter 411
Monday, October 18th, 2021 Newsletter,Things are opening up in Sydney! The streets are full of unmasked people, and the local pub is raging again, restoring our street’s familiar parking problem. I’ve spent half of my week sorting out Medicare and MyGov apps, and cursing the bureaucrats that have given us such a complicated tangled system swarming with bugs. The […]
Newsletter 410
Monday, October 11th, 2021 Newsletter,It seems the sudden martyrdom of St. Gladys has sent shock waves through members of the Federal government, who have been quick to reveal their antipathy for a Commonwealth Integrity Commission (CIC). Since Gladys left, with a parting shot with the ICAC, (which she’ll be confronting within the next two weeks), the pollies have fallen […]
Newsletter 409
Monday, October 4th, 2021 Newsletter,I was intending to leave the politics aside for this week, but at the eleventh hour Gladys has tendered her resignation! Even though it was easy to see this coming it still has a bit of shock value. I thoroughly believed Gladys would fight on to the bitter end, swearing she’s done nothing wrong, and […]
Newsletter 408
Monday, September 27th, 2021 Newsletter,I often feel I should use this newsletter to talk about art and cinema rather than politics but then I’d have nowhere to blow off steam about the things in the news that drive me to distraction. The etiquette of publishing articles in the newspapers requires a certain level of restraint. If I’m too outspoken […]
Newsletter 407
Monday, September 20th, 2021 Newsletter,Having looked at portraits as kitsch flattery last week, this time I’m turning it around with a piece on ugly portraits. I suppose it’s an obvious ploy but during these locked-down days one has to take whatever can be gleaned from the home library and the Web. The frustrating thing is that every topic is […]
Newsletter 406
Monday, September 13th, 2021 Newsletter,It only takes a quick online search to find numerous examples of texts being banned from the syllabus of American schools and colleges. What’s especially bizarre is that books that have been historically important in changing racial attitudes in the United States, such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and To Kill […]
Newsletter 405
Monday, September 6th, 2021 Newsletter,Thanks to Natalia Bradshaw for sending me the perfect word to describe life under lockdown: ‘Acedia’. According to Wikipedia the ancient Greeks used this term for “a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one’s position or condition in the world.” The Christian Church made it into a sin […]
Newsletter 404
Wednesday, September 1st, 2021 Newsletter,Life in lockdown: one day very much like the next, varied only by what one chooses to read, to watch or to write. Even the options for a quick, masked-up stroll set a 5 km limit to one’s perambulations. For me this means I can’t make it to the city or even to Centennial Park. […]
Newsletter 403
Thursday, August 26th, 2021 Newsletter,Only a Fox News presenter could look at the scenes unfolding in Afghanistan and not feel profoundly dismayed. Twenty years of sustained effort, tens of billions of dollars, thousands of lives lost, and we’re left with Taliban 1.01. It’s staggering to think the Americans could spend all that time in the country and entertain such […]
Newsletter 402
Monday, August 16th, 2021 Newsletter,Has anybody noticed a remarkable similarity in the way Scummo has handled the vaccination roll-out and the climate crisis? In both instances the strategy has been to protest loudly the seriousness of these issues, then to do the bare minimum. When it all blows up there’s another great protestation of how hard the government has […]