© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Victims of the housing bubble

Q: What's faster than lightning? A: The speed with which a "for sale" sign on a house is replaced by a "sold" sign. Somebody wrote that on Facebook recently, in a happy mood, since they had just sold their house for a tidy sum. And we know it's true, because everybody seems to be talking about it. I know some people who sold a house a couple of months ago. It had been delayed going on the market by a variety of factors. When they started talking about selling they were told they might get $650,000,…

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Asking King Pyrrhus for legal advice

Another victory like that one and we will be utterly ruined. That quote, attributed to King Pyrrhus in about 275 BC, sprang to mind when I heard that former Australian Attorney General Christian Porter had described the withdrawal of his defamation action against the ABC and journalist Louise Milligan as "a humiliating backdown" for the broadcaster. It's not a very useful quote, I suppose, because King Pyrrhus certainly won the battle against the Romans that prompted his rueful remark. His point was simply that the cost was so high he couldn't afford another victory like it.…

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Vaccines, viruses and global politics

US President Joe Biden announced recently that the United States was boosting exports of Covid vaccines. Great news. I guess this is because Joe and his government care deeply about the suffering of people in other countries and want to do their bit to help. Oh, wait, no. He's doing it to "reclaim American leadership" in the pandemic fight. Specifically, he wants to put Russia and China in their places because - as one news report puts it - "Moscow and Beijing have been taking advantage of the worldwide crisis to spread influence through distribution of…

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