A Melbourne Nursing Home is going to be closed because it failed a surprise audit by the Federal Government and so its residents will be relocated to other homes. You would think that the families of the 55 residents who had been poorly cared for at this home would be applauding the Government for doing something about the inadequate conditions. But no, the families have begun up a petition to keep the home open.

Why? Well, they say that their aged relatives are happy there, but I suspect that it’s all about the families baulking at the inconvenience of visiting an aged parent somewhere else.

Imagine if a tray containing faeces were found in a nursing home and the government did nothing about it, people would be clamouring for action. This is what was discovered at Rosden and yet the families of those wretches want them to stay put. This is in spite of Rosden having failed 17 of the 44 categories of the audit. Makes you weep at the callousness of some people towards their “loved ones”.

When I lived in Brisbane our home was cursed by marble floors. We were persuaded by the developer that marble floors were wonderful and so easy to care for. Since Pompeii and all those villas in Ancient Rome had marble flooring I was convinced that marble was the way to go. It wasn’t. Continue reading →

Senator Obama has criticised Senator McCain for not multi-tasking. He says that a potential president should be able to do several things at once. I disagree with Obama because, in my view, it is important to know how to prioritise. If there is a fire, first you put out the fire. Not much point in debating about what international fire brigades might be doing. What you need is a president who gets down to “tachles” (Yiddish for “straight talk” or “basics”) and stops mucking around with theatrical debates when there’s a genuine crisis.

I believe that Obama was caught with his pants down. When McCain says we have to do something, and he means right now before it’s too late, Obama says that a debate is doing something. He reminds me of our prime minister who would rather have a discussion than get down to actually doing something concrete. By the way, where is our elected frequent flyer today? Oh yes, he’s overseas again laying the foundations for his post PM career with the United Nations.

It is good that both candidates in the U.S election espouse the bipartisan approach to problem solving, but I did detect a hint of resentment in Obama this morning whereas there was none in McCain.

There is no point in discussing any other topic while the economy is in trouble. Without money, there is no funding for education, health, pensions, social security, defence, the environment or anything else. This trouble in the economy will affect everybody, even the democrats, if it is not seen to.

So debates and elections should be out the window until this problem is solved.

While the rest of the world busies itself with philosophy, economics and climate change, I devote myself to trivia… or is it? Stuff like ring-pull tabs on cans from the former Soviet Union which only a wrestler on steroids can open. Teapots that leak all over the place have occupied my attention as well. And my search for a toaster that toasts is a persistent refrain. Continue reading →

I just don’t get it. Australians worship a sportsman who makes millions of dollars for kicking a ball around some field. They love a rock star who earns a packet gyrating on stage for a couple of hours, but when it comes to electing a political leader, heaven help the man who has actually worked hard and made a success of his life. He will have to apologise forever for not being a loser. He will have to convince the ordinary public, and boy are they ordinary, that he can be trusted with their future in spite of the fact that he has risen to the top.

Why is it that Aussies seem to prefer a political leader who hasn’t got the ability to rise above poverty?

The irony of it all is that if you asked one of these vacant lots if they want to have millions in assets, not one of them would say “no”. What a bunch of hypocrites!

What makes them think that a man who has not been able to make something of himself will be better equipped to run the country’s economy?

If they don’t like Turnbull because of his personality or his policies then that’s fair enough, but it shouldn’t be because Turnbull is a financial success. The media keeps on referring to him as “the millionaire banker” in the same tone they would use for paedophile or sleazebag. How ridiculous!

When I vote for a prime minister I want one who has a proven record of achievement, a hard worker with ability who inspires confidence. For me, the fact that Turnbull is a self-made millionaire means that he may be able to do something about the economy.

I really can’t see why the voters are more impressed by a man whose wife has made him a multi-millionaire than one who did it by himself.

In my previous post I suggested that the baby bonus encouraged some women to have babies for the money. While I concede that this is not always the main reason for having babies, statistics have come out to show that many more babies were born on July the first than on the previous day. Why? Well, on the 1st July the payment for having a baby went up by $742. Continue reading →

When the former Howard Government decided that what Australia needed was more babies because the population was aging, it created many problems. Australia was just one of the developed countries where birth rates had declined. Continue reading →

I have always been fascinated by Art Deco and Art Nouveau and so when we moved to Melbourne I decided that I would go to the National Gallery of Victoria to see the special exhibition there. You have to credit the NGV with an amazing publicity campaign. Everyone I met had asked me if I’d been to the exhibition yet. Continue reading →

You know how you go along to see a movie without knowing anything about it except that it has no gratuitous violence or special effects?

Well, that’s how we chose this little treasure of a movie. “Welcome to the Sticks” is absolutely captivating. It’s witty, heart-warming and brilliantly produced.

In Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, Mark Antony says he came to bury Caesar, not to praise him. I find that it’s so much easier to criticise or bury something than to sing its praises. One can be acerbic. laconic, acidic, mean and nasty and that takes little effort, on my part, anyway. But try to say you liked a film very, very, very, much and if you go on it begins to sound a bit cloying.

‘Welcome to the Sticks” is such fun and yet touching. Its actors are faultless. The script is fluent and logical and I’m so glad we went to see it.

So what is it about? Well, it involves a post office manager who is transferred to the Northern region of France as a punishment for misrepresenting himself as disabled. He doesn’t want to go, they speak ‘funny’ there and the weather is too cold.

When he arrives, he finds that their dialect is practically incomprehensible, owing to the proximity to Belgium and Holland. So starts what could have been pretty pathetic had it not been handled by a director with finesse.

So how do you convey a dialect in subtitles? We have all been to film where the subtitles are so bad that they aren’t any help at all.

These ones, however, are brilliant. It’s the first time that I’ve ever been blown over by the excellence of subtitles and there should be an award at film festivals for that category, in my opinion. Even the title of the film in English is a play on words on the patois of the region. Words beginning with “S are pronounced “SH” hence the French title “Ch’tis” and then we have the double entendre of “Sticks” as a place where you don’t want to have a vacation. Yes , there is a message in the movie about myths and stereotypes and prejudice, but it’s gently done and with much good humour.

Had some American producer made this movie with Adam Sandler or someone like him it would have been a disaster. Everything would have been explained ad infinitum, but in the hands of director and actor, Dany Boon, who originally comes for that ‘tragic’ region “Welcome to the Sticks” has been a runaway success which broke all box office records in France.