Opinion

Jeff Corbett

Direct debit risk

Posted: 08 Dec 09 | Giving an authority to a business to take money regularly from our bank accounts does seem a risky and strangely trusting thing to do. |

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Freeway mesmerisation

Posted: 07 Dec 09 | I believe there is a new contributor to the road toll, the armchair ride that is a combination of a modern car and the freeway. |

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Laman St figs

Posted: 04 Dec 09 | I see the campaign to remove Newcastle's trees as the denuding of Newcastle, a new buzz industry that when it expires will leave us with saplings. |

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Posted: 03 Dec 09 | Monogamy is a scheme that allows the husband confidence that his children are his children while he's meeting the overwhelming and natural urge to broadcast his genes, and it works well for the great majority of men. |

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Hand holders

Posted: 02 Dec 09 | There are two types of men: men who hold hands and men who don't. |

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Climate change agnostic

Posted: 01 Dec 09 | Is our climate changing? I don't know. If it is changing, is that change natural or man-made? I don't know. Will it be catastrophic for man? I don't know. Is there anything we can do about it? I don't know. |

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Supersized houses

Posted: 30 Nov 09 | Australia's new houses have just become bigger than those of supersized America, and if we needed a wake-up from our burgeoning wastefulness this should be it. |

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Public housing buyers

Posted: 27 Nov 09 | The advantages of promoting home ownership among public housing tenants are so powerful I'm surprised our NSW Government doesn't have such a scheme. |

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Hazards of charity

Posted: 26 Nov 09 | A small episode in a documentary following newlywed Novocastrians on a journey in Afghanistan has reminded me of the hazards of charity. |

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Hobby doctors

Posted: 25 Nov 09 | It must be very rude to question why 64 per cent of medical school places are given to women, because no-one does, at least publicly. |

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Shorter school year

Posted: 24 Nov 09 | The problem seems to be the timing of the exams, because it must be difficult for both students and teachers to see end-of-year exams as other than the end of the year. |

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Cat curfew

Posted: 20 Nov 09 | I like cats, and so I didn't mean to create any unreasonable difficulties for their owners when I asked Newcastle City Council on Friday if Blackbutt Reserve had been declared a wildlife protection area. |

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The Australian binge

Posted: 19 Nov 09 | Our national and state leader, our police chiefs, and myriad community leaders have been banging the table about young Australians' binge drinking, but none has done anything effective about it. |

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Christmas waste

Posted: 18 Nov 09 | It's not that I'm ungracious, at least not in this respect. It is that I am irritated by the waste, the waste of money whether it is mine or someone else's. |

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The national sob

Posted: 17 Nov 09 | I and countless other Australians were caned mercilessly at school, and so we deserve to be the beneficiaries of the third national sob next year. |

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Money and happiness

Posted: 16 Nov 09 | The economists have gauged the impact of money gains and losses on individuals' happiness and, so, they can estimate the amount of money needed to restore happiness after an unhappy life event. |

Comments (26)

Taxing fat

Posted: 13 Nov 09 | Medical researchers have found that eating fatty food induces us to eat more of it and that the inducement lasts for three days. |

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Caged hens

Posted: 12 Nov 09 | The managing director of The Australian Egg Corporation, James Kellaway, has appeared twice in The Herald in the past fortnight doing his best to explain away the cruelty that is battery hen farming. |

Comments (54)

School uniform sling

Posted: 11 Nov 09 | Parents pay substantially more for unique school uniforms because, one, there is no competition among retailers for its supply and, two, they have to cover the sling to the school. |

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New appreciation

Posted: 10 Nov 09 | If I have been left with one life-changing reassessment from an encounter with my mortality five years ago it is that the mundane, the everyday, the ordinary events of our life are more precious than we realise. |

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