Sticky

By:
On:
In: ageing, featured, latest post

In Australia, we have just completed a Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. Some people were shocked at the findings, which emerged out of this enquiry. More than 10, 500 submissions and the testimony of 600 witnesses were considered during the two years it ran. Elderly Australians have been abused, drugged into submission and treated abhorrently according to the evidence provided to the commission. The rights of those in aged care have been sorely neglected and transgressed over many decades here in Australia within the current federally run system. It is time to ask ourselves why we abuse the elderly and why we allow this abuse to go on unchecked despite countless reviews into the current system for aged care?Continue Reading

By:
On:
In: featured, latest post

One of the most striking things I have observed during this global pandemic is how dependent we, as a 21C civilisation, have become on recreational activities. The absence of sports on the TV and from the daily calendar has left a gaping hole in the lives of many. Likewise, the removal of live entertainment and other shared recreational pursuits has reduced our lives in a number of noticeable ways. The majority of affected people are watchers of sport, rather than actual participants of games of sports. The disappearance of the football codes, the cancellation and postponement of major events like Wimbledon, the Masters, the Olympics, Grand Prix races, and more have shrunk the worlds of millions of fans around the globe. It is clear that you don’t know what you have until it is taken away. The price of sport and other non-essential activities at a time of COVID crisis seems unimaginably high.Continue Reading

crime scene do not cross signage

By:
On:
In: featured, latest post

So, you want to write one of those moody police detective dramas seen on TV. Well, here are the secret ingredients necessary to make it happen. Firstly, you need two characters who will be the main protagonists in your riveting episodic series. These will be two of the most fucked up cops ever let loose on an unsuspecting general public. Personal problems? Each of these young- and good-looking police detectives will be riddled with a full menu of intimate and socially dysfunctional issues. The producers will cast two actors who look like they have been working as apprentice hairdressers and are the least likely looking cops ever to have walked the earth. This kind of thing is par for the course when it comes to moody detective shows on Netflix and the other streaming services. They understand that the networks and TV people desperately want to appeal to a younger demographic and will cast authenticity to the four winds to do it. Now, pay attention because this is how to write a killer moody police drama series.Continue Reading

Sticky
man with professional camera filming outdoors

By:
On:
In: content writing, featured, latest post

I want to make a confession first up, which is that I hate the word blog and all its extensions – blogging, blogger, blogged and blogs. Short for ‘web log’ apparently, blog, is an ugly word let’s face it. It sounds to me like a colloquial term fit for acts of defecation. Thus, the art of blogging is akin to a ballerina farting loudly throughout a performance of the Nutcracker Suite. OK got that off my chest. I wonder who came up with the term in the first place? I Googled it and according to a Wikipedia entry ‘weblog’ was so named by one Jom Barger in 1997 and one Peter Merholz reduced the two words to ‘blog’ in 1999 via a phrase posted on his blog. Now you know.Continue Reading

By:
On:
In: content writing, featured, latest post

In the face of the COVID19 pandemic the world will turn online to escape the effects of the coronavirus. Our real world of fleshly pursuits is unsafe, with thousands dying from the virus and hundreds of thousands becoming infected. Digital viruses seem a much less risky possibility in 2020. Social distancing is demanding that people stay at home and those flickering screens have never looked more inviting. Social media beckons as the only safe way to engage with your fellow human being. Even online trolls are, seemingly, more attractive than the looming shadow of the grim reaper in this novel plague year.Continue Reading

Sticky

By:
On:
In: featured, latest post

When I was asked to write something about the recent passing of celebrity chef and raconteur, Anthony Bourdain, I realised that he had been a part of my own culinary journey. His death by suicide, whilst shocking, does fit with the narrative contained within his first book. I received, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, his breakout bestselling memoir, as a birthday present from my mother. It was a surprising choice and an equally surprising success. The book lifted the lid on the squalid and steamy underworld of commercial kitchens in the United States. Personally, I had been rattling the pans in restaurant kitchens for nearly 20 years, prior to the publication of Kitchen Confidential in 2000. Commercial kitchens, I suspect, are pretty similar around the globe, especially in western cities like New York, Sydney and London. RIP Anthony Bourdain.Continue Reading

Modern Morocco

By:
On:
In: featured

“As Morocco’s economy slows, the jobless are getting restive”, The Economist, 1st March 2018. https://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21737560-protests-north-have-pricked-kings-conscience-moroccos-economy-slows The article explores recent developments in Morocco and begins by listing statistics meant to describe the economic improvement within this country. It quotes GDP per person increasing by some 70% since 2000 and mentions taxContinue Reading

By:
On:
In: featured

by Robert Hamilton I recently returned to Sydney for a month long working holiday. After living in NSW’s capital city for some 15 years through the 1980s and 1990s, I had departed the harbour city just prior to its 2000 Olympic games and had shifted to regional Australia. My timeContinue Reading