Random thoughts and observations
Up until the late 1970s the Labor Party and the Country Party were advocates of decentralisation. There was a commonly held belief that Australia’s population should not be too concentrated in the capital cities. In 1966 Gough Whitlam delivered a speech in which he said that decentralisation was necessary to cut down “the vast social [...]
Slavery was abolished on June 1, 1862 in all United States possessions, according to Brainy History. That’s exactly 145 years ago. This was during the Civil War, so it was a symbolic but hollow gesture if the date is correct. The slave trade in Britain was made illegal in 1802, backed by further legislation in [...]
I meant to post this a week ago but time escaped me. Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT have agreed to extend daylight saving to fall in line with Tasmania. It will start on the first Sunday in October and finish on the first Sunday in April. That poses an interesting problem for the [...]
The Council of Australian Governments meeting (COAG) this week illustrates the farce of the Australian Federation. There was a lot of hot air and little was achieved. With all the states being Labor and the Commonwealth being Liberal there is never going to be much effort invested in achieving positive outcomes, especially in a national [...]
Karyn writes about a practice called “happy slapping” which happily I’ve not heard of before. She defines it this way: Originally, the idea was to walk up to some random stranger and slap them, while friends recorded the event on their mobile phones. Hilarious, I don’t think! Whatever endorphins that act released obviously became very [...]
