Australia Day and the Highland Clearances

Australia Day came and went and alas, not once did I think about my birthplace, Scotland, or the country where I spent my childhood (New Zealand). The older I get and the further away from my Citizenship Day ceremony (January 26, 2000), the more it seems I have assimilated. I do not mean assimilate in a flag-wearing, gum boot-tossing, beer-swilling, ‘It-was-in- the-‘Stralian-so-it-must-be-true’, sense. Regardless, it is some admission from an iconoclastic alien, someone who had…

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Last drinks at the Paradise Motel

As I gave up drinking alcohol some 36 years ago, it was probably not surprising I forgot the essential ingredient for a house-warming party. “Um,” said She Who Trusted Me with the Catering, “What about the ice – for those who are bringing something to drink?” Off I went on a mercy dash to buy a bag of ice. The first guest had arrived before I returned and showed me the best way to prepare…

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Water theft a sign of crumbling civilisation

As communities across drought-paralysed Australia patiently wait for rain, reports of water theft, ranging from relatively trivial incidents to a 25,000-litre heist, are troubling. Can we be far from outright anarchy when dishonest (and sometimes honest but desperate), people help themselves to other people’s water? There are precedents for this – just think back to Cape Town‘s ‘Day Zero’ crisis in 2018 when a city of 3.74 million was set to run out of reticulated…

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Return of The Wastemakers

I had a Vance Packard moment this week, thwarting the concept of planned obsolescence, which he wrote about in his 1960 best-seller, The Wastemakers. My triumph was no big deal, but they were hard-won as I finally, after four weeks, got my 32-year-old Technics stereo system working again. Before we get into that, and on a similar theme, I would like to have a rant about the complexities and nonsense of Windows 10. Microsoft’s latest…

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