Friday on My Mind – We need volunteers – you, you and you! March 31, 2023 By Bob Wilson Last time I wrote about volunteering in Australia (2019), I confessed to having not done much of it at all. A lot can change in four years. I became re-acquainted with a former journalist colleague, Donna Fraser, who just happens to be chair of the Glengallan Homestead Trust. I had been to visit the partially restored…
One of our readers commented that on the same day the media were banging on about the Federal Government’s $368 billion submarine plan, a lone SBS panel programme focused on the national housing crisis. It is tempting to compare spending on affordable housing with the capital cost of up to five nuclear-powered submarines. The Federal Government’s (annual) commitment to affordable housing (currently $1.6 billion), equates to about 13% of its annual submarine budget (ie if…
Amidst the airport’s security cameras, facial recognition technology and contactless check-in, it took a dog (and a human) to catch me out. We were about to exit customs in New Zealand when a customs officer with a beagle on a lead passed us by. The beagle tracked back, put his front paws on my trolley and sniffed at my black shoulder bag. “Have you had food in that bag, Sir?” the Customs Officer asked. “I…
I just happened to be reading a novel set in the Edwardian era at the same time as the media was going bonkers (again) about the Reserve Bank raising interest rates by 0.25% to 3.6%. In Louis de Bernieres’s* book, The Dust That Falls from Dreams, one of the characters is holding forth about the sudden rise in the bank rate and subsequent collapse of the share market in 1914. Hamilton McCosh, a daring entrepreneur…