Opinion

Jeff Corbett

Recycling garbage

Posted: 22 Feb 10 | I have no doubt that most people will transfer much of their garbage into the recycling bin when the small bins arrive next January. |

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Posted: 22 Feb 10 | An insurer can, and often does, require prospective customers to undergo a medical examination, which delves into many issues of the utmost privacy, so why should it not be free to require a DNA test? |

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Citizen's arrest

Posted: 18 Feb 10 | Maybe it's the solution to crime, all of us law-abiding citizens going about each day ever ready to make a citizen's arrest. |

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Criminal parents

Posted: 17 Feb 10 | It is likely that these derelict parents have been breeding for the baby bonus since it was introduced six years ago and that we have tribes of their urchins just a few years off unleashing themselves on us. Wouldn't it be wonderful if a parents' court could order sterilisations! |

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Aussie accents

Posted: 16 Feb 10 | There are fewer Australians speaking broad or ocker Australian and fewer speaking the plummy cultivated Australian, the linguists' explanation for the latter decline being that "it was no longer socially advantageous in the later part of the 20th century". The plum was always a comical fraud! |

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Labor dinosaurs

Posted: 15 Feb 10 | No need to worry about quality when the Labor candidate is a cert, and I doubt that many local party members could make a reasonable assessment of a candidate's quality anyway. |

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Five-star falseness

Posted: 12 Feb 10 | There are no laughs, no fun, no uncontrived rapport to be found in the five stars of my travels, and I am always intrigued that few are willing to speak at a level that breaks the churning white noise of these establishments. |

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Ode to the f-word

Posted: 11 Feb 10 | English has no other word as useful as the f-word so as it expires we need to invent another one and floorking soon. |

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Inconsiderate amputees

Posted: 09 Feb 10 | Occasionally we're caught off guard by one leg of shorts or a pinned-up trouser leg flapping eerily empty as a fellow leaps along on crutches, but to present a metal contraption growing out of a human body is brutal. |

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Fernleigh fallacies

Posted: 08 Feb 10 | Fernleigh Track linking Newcastle and Lake Macquarie is a shared path for cyclists and walkers, but walkers who break the rules don't like that. |

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My low points

Posted: 22 Dec 09 | Whether for reasons of misjudgement, poor reasoning, prejudice or plain old stupidity I have plumbed a few low points over the year. I must have. I think. |

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The year positively

Posted: 21 Dec 09 | What has moved some generous soul to nominate me for the Australian of the Year Awards 2010? My being a nice person? That I'm getting old? Something I've written? |

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Unaccountable coppers

Posted: 18 Dec 09 | The Newcastle police who make the decision to warn, caution or conference young cowards and budding criminals seem to have a strangely generous interpretation of the Young Offenders Act. |

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Mithras, not Christmas

Posted: 17 Dec 09 | Christmas needs a purpose, a reason for being, a point, and for the great majority of Australians it has none. |

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Air-conditioned grubs

Posted: 16 Dec 09 | One day, and soon I hope, all households will have an allocation of electricity that will force the air-conditioned to choose either air-conditioning or lights, television and refrigeration. |

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Not really speeding

Posted: 15 Dec 09 | When is speeding not speeding? When you speed only a little bit? When you speed safely? When you're not caught? |

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Dog versus cat

Posted: 14 Dec 09 | My family is a cat in, dog out family, in that the dog is not permitted inside except at times of thunderstorms or fireworks. We see the cat as clean and the dog as not clean, or at least not clean enough for inside. |

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Street lights

Posted: 11 Dec 09 | The Hunter has 50,000 street lights switched on from dusk till dawn every night of the year and chewing through enough electricity to power 3420 homes for the year. |

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