Just as well the Commonwealth Government Budget wasn’t tabled last week – that would have been too much of a mixed message. A nation’s budget is all about redistribution of wealth, a concept worth keeping in mind at a time when £100 million of British taxpayers’ money was spent on an unnecessary coronation pageant. As has been repeatedly pointed out, Prince Charles became King by default on September 8, 2022, on the death of his…
How well I remember the coronation of Princess Elizabeth II on June 2, 1953. Then resident in Scotland, I was four years and seven months old and had just finished reading Das Kapital and was moving on to The Condition of the Working Class in England. I had also asked for Stories,Tales and Fables by the Marquis de Sade but faither said ‘Nae bairn should be reading that’ and offered instead ‘Noddy on the Runaway Train’….
Today’s headline about homeless people could well be an urban myth; that is, a story people tell each other, swearing that it’s true. The housing crisis in Australia – a combination of unaffordable housing and scarce rental properties – is forcing people to live in their cars. I’ve done a bit of fact checking on this, but hang around while I relate this story from Tasmania. We’d stopped at Scottsdale, a high country town in…
Wherever you go in Australia to visit friends and family, the conversation very soon turns to the scarcity and high cost of rental housing. The topic will then quickly shift to the ever-rising cost of houses and why parents worry about their adult kids taking on seven-figure mortgages. As residential property analyst Michael Matusik recently said, it comes down to the Bank of Mum and Dad. Few cities or towns have escaped the 20% rise…