Has it ever occurred to you how few Australian Christmas movies there are and why our lives are so permeated by American culture (such as it is)? This week’s theme came to mind whilst seated in a front row pew at St Mark’s Anglican church in Warwick. We were participating in a Christmas service with our new choir, the East Street Singers. It’s a magnificent 151-year-old sandstone kirk with a landmark tower, stained glass windows…
Dear WordPress Followers How quickly a year passes. It is time for my annual subscriber drive, where you get to choose whether to make a small payment to cover ongoing expenses of maintaining the Bobwords website. FOMM is a free weekly essay offered in the spirit of Citizen Journalism. There are no ads on the website and I intend to keep it that way. If you are a fan of FOMM, which began in May…
We who have always associated ‘Black Friday’ with Friday the 13th (unlucky for some), were no doubt confused by the retail rallying call of the past week. According to McCrindle Research, the US concept of Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), is gaining traction in Australia. Back in 2017, a McCrindle survey showed that 1 in 4 (24%) of Australians had never heard of Black Friday. Two years on, only 6% of Australians have never…
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s much-reported speech, where he referred to my cohort (the over-65s) as ‘an economic time bomb’, should not be seen as random. The speech to the conservative think tank, the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia (CEDA), was deeply calculated. Frydenberg’s thesis is that older Australians should work longer and take up re-training to help facilitate a return to the work force, thus easing the country’s social security burden. Frydenberg was immediately…