Category: Columns
Geoff has written for publications as diverse as PC User and The Northern Star His weekly columns have been a source of humour and inspiration for tens of thousands of readers and his mailbox is always full.
Here you can find his more recent contributions.
admin /13 March, 2009
Last week the Greens and the Nationals joined forces in the NSW parliament to force the government to reveal its three page report on a rail link between South East Queensland and our fair state. While I am not holding my breath for those three pages to contain anything world shattering I am hopeful that there will be a glimmer of recognition that when governments spend billions on transport infrastructure, the bulk of it should be on rail.
In October 2007, the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy announced a freeze on new airports and motorways and plan to move interstate truck traffic onto internal rail ferries. The cost to the state of maintaining the rail network is miniscule compared to that of maintaining interstate highways. While France is busy switching from road to rail, we are busy denying that rail exists. In the recent infrastructure package the government gave an extra 150million to roads and nothing to rail.
admin /7 March, 2009
Regular readers of this column already know that I have a thing about mowing. Also dentist drills, vacuum cleaners, leaf blowers and chainsaws. To me, they are all high pitched, necessary evils to be avoided whenever possible. My wife says it is innate sloth. In truth, though, it goes deeper. It is a lizard brain thing.
I was drawn recently to ponder the painful subject of growing grass only to cut it down in its prime. I had spent two and a half months working on a new book, Cry Me a River.
admin /2 March, 2009
Sport is not always politically correct. Bullfighting, for example, involves cruelty and blood lust that most Anglos associate with bear baiting. The beauty of the bullfight, though, is the danger to the human participant. It is this danger that makes sport, sporting. The phrase ‘shooting fish in a barrel’ shows our disdain for games where the prey does not have a ‘sporting chance’.
We do not, as a whole society, support the notion of humans engaged in fights to the death, though plenty of civilisations have. Our ethics have evolved to exclude capital punishment of criminals, let alone poor saps who have no other way to earn a dying.
admin /27 February, 2009
Some of you complained I was a little florid last week, comparing rally drivers to Danish whale murderers and banana bending dwarf tossers. In my defense, I point out that image of cars bouncing along dirt tracks at 200kmph where koalas regularly cross two orders of magnitude slower, has all the hallmarks of disaster waiting to happen. Certainly, any parent who saw their toddler wandering onto a race track would imagine the worst.
admin /6 February, 2009
I was one of a dozen North Coast residents who attended a climate summit in Canberra last weekend. From across the country, 1,500 people came to protest about the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. The parliamentarians came back to work on Tuesday morning to see 2,500 people surrounding Parliament House, bearing banners emblazoned with ‘Climate Emergency’.
The talk fest was inspiring. More than one thousand of the people at the summit came from community action groups. They are not employees of environment organisations, unions or political parties, they are mums and dads scared witless that the poles are melting, the seas are turning to acid, and our government is pretending that it doesn’t matter.
admin /29 January, 2009
A 32 year old man was shot at Burleigh Heads on Jan 26th, Australia Day, probably after a traffic incident in which tempers flared. Across the Northern Rivers police attended situations that threatened to spiral out of control as large groups of young men got on the turps and chanted Ozzie, Ozzie, Ozzie. Oy, Oy, Oy. Family groups left popular beaches and picnic grounds shortly after lunch, leaving the increasingly ugly scene to the revellers.
