I have written a few blogs on tariffs for Quadrant online and recently had a to and fro with a Roger Partridge who is the Chairman and senior fellow at the New Zealand Initiative. The New Zealand Initiative is a free-market think tank. Partridge describes himself as a Classical Liberal. All of this seems fine,…

My internet is down again. This time I know it is the modem because I connected an old modem to the NBN box and it fired up. Couldn’t connect because Telstra no longer supports my old modem, but still it works. I pointed this out to the last Telstra Indian guy who called me back…

The blackout tale continues. As I wrote last week, the blackout in my local area fried my computer’s hard drive. It may also have damaged my NBN connection. In any event, my internet went into buffering mode last Saturday morning as did my TV. Those days of climbing onto the roof to check one’s aerial…

Multitasking, I was writing something, not this, on Tuesday night, drinking red wine, and intermittently watching TV. Out went the power in my local area.  It is a shock for us city slickers.  My desktop computer (incidentally the hard drive of which I later found had been ruined by the incident) sits in my enclosed…

A bifurcated tale this week which bounces off the disposition of Tony Abbott. First on budgeting and second on Ukraine. I like Tony Abbott. He is a traditionalist and a great supporter of Christendom. But I am not sure of the soundness of his political and strategic nous. His post-election budget after winning a resounding…

Walking to church last Sunday. A little late. It was already 9 am. Part of the reason for my lateness was that I had decided to bundle up and drop off some unwanted clothes at the Sally Army store, which is on my way. A red MAGA cap was part of the bundle. It looked…

I argued on another site that Trump should be allowed breathing space to try and forge an acceptable peace. Apparently, numbers of others, including supposed and even genuine conservatives, think that this is a betrayal of Ukraine. Apparently, all unbeknown to me, I was, according to another contributor, supporting “Ukraine’s capitulation.” I understand where these…

There is a line in the movie True Romance (1993) spoken by Clarence Worley, Christian Slater’s character, where he says: I ain’t no fag but Elvis was prettier than most women, you know, most women. I’ve always said if I had to fuck a guy, I mean had to, if my life depended on it,…

It is a mistake these days to assume that the other person is sane. I went to my club gym early on Wednesday. I’d had a doctor’s appointment to check my blood sugar level and do a licence check – a demeaning procedure that applies in NSW once you have reached a certain age. Some…

Having been diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic I have regular fasting blood tests to check my sugar level. Just another burden of advancing years though, of course, it strikes people of all ages. I don’t mind; it does not interfere with my daily intake of red wine. Anyway, I called into the medical clinic…