So This Guy Basically Runs Australia Now

I love a bit of politics, me. And normally I love elections. Give me a bit of round-the-clock, through-the-night, staying-with-it-till-the-results-are-in Dimbleby and I just can’t get enough of that coverage. I’ve stayed up through the night to watch the US elections unfolding before, and I happily had the BBC coverage running in the background at work as the results came in in the UK back in May. But something about my first Aussie election left…

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Moving House

Ok. So I’ve been awfully slack on the whole blogging front lately. Well, to be honest since we left London and travelled across South America and moved ourselves over to Australia in fact, my blogging efforts haven’t quite been the same. But. I think it’s time for a change and time for a bit of a new project, so as a sort of mid year resolution I’m moving everything over to this also rather neglected…

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Survey Fail

See Film First, they of all those free movie screenings that we used to go to when we lived in London, seem to be starting up over here in Oz, which can’t be a bad thing now that Sal and I have a whopping mortgage to service and need some cheap entertainment. I’m not quite sure how I was supposed to fill in this survey they sent me, however: Luckily my three favourite arthouse films…

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So I was just booking tickets to see Brett Easton Ellis speak when he’s in town next month, and I was having a look around the other events that are happening as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival. I was thinking about The Davitt Awards, but it looks like I’ll have to brush up on my Latin…

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Australians Know Their Football

Some more quality fact checking from The Age, today, where I spotted this in their “Complete Guide to South Africa 2010”: I must have missed the announcement that the home nations have now begun competing as a single unified team, under the Union Flag. I hope The Age’s knowledgeable football writers have informed the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Football Associations that they will no longer be required. I guess it does solve that old…

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Has It Really Been 25 Years?

That thing that’s about to kick off over in South Africa isn’t the only big football event happening this Aussie winter. There’s also the small matter of England’s 8th best football team heading our way to play a couple of friendlies in July. Of course I already have my tickets for the Melbourne game (in the Everton end with this lot, natch) so when I saw that the Everton store were clearing out their remaining…

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10 Year Study Unable To Rule Out Link Between Newspapers And Bullshit

Right. So a ten year study into the possible link between mobile phones and brain tumours finds no evidence that phones cause cancer. How do you report that then, newspapers of the word? The Daily Mail: “Long conversations on mobile phones can increase risk of cancer, suggests 10-year study” Daily Express: “CANCER LINK TO HEAVY USE OF MOBILE PHONES” The Daily Telegraph: “Half an hour of mobile use a day ‘increases brain cancer risk’” The…

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“…you’re a parliamentarian, in Australia, who believes that the world you live in is less than 10,000 years old…?”

An absolute pleasure, last night, while flicking through the small selection of terrestrial channels we have to choose from here in Australia, past the uninspiring Oscars coverage and dull US drama imports, to stumble across Richard Dawkins on Q and A, the ABC’s local version of Question Time. If you watch this clip from the start of the show, you may be struck as I was by the gulf between Dawkins and the rest of…

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Insulted by Spam

So I just received the following message from teh interwebs: From: Jennifer Holmstrum To: Matt Subject: I am worried about you Matt Hi Matt, Please listen to me on this. You can either continue on the path that you are on right now? Or you can make a positive change that will reward you for years to come. Matt, I am talking about your career. Go here right now and see how easy it is…

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The Day We Bought The Bank A House

There’s a well thumbed copy of a book called Everything You Need To Know (But Forget To Ask) When Buying Or Selling Property sitting on the table beside my bed. According to the book it is not uncommon to wake up the day after you buy a house thinking “oh god, what have we done?” Buyer’s Remorse, they call it. Maybe this will set in later, but on Sunday morning–the day after we bought the…

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