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Monthly Archives: November 2022

Read more about the article All those jobs I couldn’t cope with
Psst. Wanna buy a kitchen sink?

All those jobs I couldn’t cope with

My wife and I were talking the other day about our patchwork employment histories. I'm lucky I wound up, eventually, with a job I loved. I sure had a lot of jobs I didn't love. The first “job” I ever had was selling programmes at Newcastle Rugby League matches. I think I was still in primary school, and I got the job because a classmate’s father produced the programmes and maybe had something to do with the league competition. The idea was to earn some pocket money, since my official family pocket money had been indefinitely…

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Read more about the article Still quiet on the western front

Still quiet on the western front

The appearance in 2022 of a new screen version of All Quiet on the Western Front has brought many of my thoughts on this extraordinary book back to mind. All Quiet on the Western Front was, strangely, a book that I deliberately skipped reading for a very long time. Even though I keenly hoovered up scores of books about The Great War of 1914-1918, I had a prejudice against Erich Maria Remarque’s book that wasn’t based on anything sensible. I guess, for a start, I wasn’t so interested in looking at the war through the eyes…

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Read more about the article Old King Coal was a merry old liar and cheat

Old King Coal was a merry old liar and cheat

A friend of mine had a job once at a grain silo in western NSW, testing wheat for its gluten content. Farmers were paid according to the gluten content of the grain, so the results he got from grinding and analysing his test portion were very important to them. Some farmers, my friend said, offered him bribes of alcohol and other presents to falsify his test results. Needless to say, he refused. Not unlike a story that resurfaced this week, when independent MP Andrew Wilkie accused the multinational corporations that run Australia’s export coal industry of…

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