Bob Wilson - Friday on My Mind

You won’t read too much in the mainstream media about the online news magazine, The Conversation. In case you didn’t know about The Conversation (research-based articles by academics), the Federal Labor Government gave the not-for-profit news organisation seed money of $1.5 million in 2011 and an extra $2 million over two years in the 2013 budget. But Education Minister Christopher Pyne has cut the funding, so The Conversation has to replace 25% of its operational…

Continue reading

She Who Pays The Bills has been keeping a household budget since long before we took up the business of joint accounts and sharing one car (more on that later). When I was perusing The Courier-Mail’s comic-book summary of the Federal budget (a free read in a coffee shop, OK), it came to mind what a jolly old mess households would be in if, like our dim-witted leaders in Canberra, they had doubled their debt…

Continue reading

I had a ‘jump the shark’ moment this week. What, you don’t know about jumping the shark? It is a buzz phrase coined to describe the point in a TV series when far-fetched events are included merely for the sake of novelty, indicative of a decline in quality. The term originates from an episode of Happy Days where The Fonz goes water-skiing and literally jumps a shark. There are loads of examples of bad choice…

Continue reading

watch video Even though I have lived in the southern hemisphere since I was six years old, Kath Tait’s song about prejudice and xenophobia resonates with me. My folks immigrated to New Zealand, taking up residence in a two-horse North Island town in the 1950s. Kids at our school had strident voices and peculiar accents. I was a novelty – a six-year-old boy with a broad east coast Scottish accent. Women would come into the…

Continue reading