Opinion

Jeff Corbett

Coronation Street blog

Posted: 22 Dec 11 | I’d seen a number of perpetually disapproving women just like Ena Sharples, nervous mousy women like Minnie, stern and sneering Marthas and monosyllabic men in overalls, real characters rather than the impossibly melodramatic characters of American and Australian soap. And that’s why I sometimes have a sense of Coronation Street when I’m on my blog. |

Comments (18)

Causing no offence

Posted: 21 Dec 11 | Do I ever regret offending anyone? Of course I do, especially when the offence is unintended or unwarranted! The problem is that I don't think I've offended anyone without intention or good reason this year. |

Comments (71)

The high ground

Posted: 20 Dec 11 | I'll admit to more than a little sympathy for my youngest son when he protested against my refusal in July to fudge his learner driver's logbook. "But everyone does it!" he cried, and since the minimum qualifying experience has been increased to 120 hours I believe he is very nearly right. |

Comments (51)

In praise of myself

Posted: 19 Dec 11 | For reasons that are blatantly obvious on this blog, criticism from soccer suckers, tattooed idiots, Ulysseans, rottwielders and, pre 2010, four-wheel-drivers is never worth taking to heart. |

Comments (52)

A f---ing sham

Posted: 14 Dec 11 | It was always blatant hypocrisy when police charged anyone for using the F-word, but those charges are now something more sinister, a sham and a victimisation that our law and our courts have tolerated for too long. |

Comments (92)

Newcastle's soccer louts

Posted: 15 Dec 11 | Soccer throughout the world seems to attract fans who find their courage in mobs, and it seems that the Jets' thugs are doing their best to emulate Britain's notorious soccer louts. |

Comments (89)

Useless dietary guidelines

Posted: 13 Dec 11 | Sugar-laden soft drink is as much a threat to some people's health as tobacco is to others', yet it is often cheaper than bottled water and always cheaper than milk. Should a bottle of soft drink carry a photo of an obese person, in briefs? |

Comments (96)

Cycle touring madness

Posted: 12 Dec 11 | There don't seem to be shades of responses to touring by bicycle. At one end people will tell me I must be mad, or they'll ask why, as in "why don't you go by car?", and at the other end is the wistful wish that he or she could do the same. |

Comments (45)

Offal Australians

Posted: 01 Dec 11 | It was a major step in the evolution of the modern Australian, the disappearance of the bag of giblets that accompanied dressed chickens 25 years ago, but we should not be complacent. There are still offal eaters out there. |

Comments (75)

Short of words

Posted: 30 Nov 11 | I have more trouble, too, retrieving words from my mental files. Indeed, it is wrong to say that I have the word on the tip of my tongue, because the fact is that so often the word is stuck a long way short of my tongue's tip. |

Comments (51)

The light on lights

Posted: 29 Nov 11 | Speed and you'll arrive too soon for the green, and SCATS recognises, too, that heavy traffic travels at less than the speed limit and adapts the sequence accordingly. So travelling faster than the platoon, even within the speed limit, will see you waiting at the next lights. |

Comments (69)

The Hunter's best pies

Posted: 28 Nov 11 | What makes a good pie, and, for that matter, what makes a pie not good? I look for a gravy that's not too runny, a pastry that flakes at least on the top, a case that holds the contents, and if it's curry, my fave, a curry pie made for people who like curry pies, not for people who don't like curry pies. |

Comments (75)

Family tree futility

Posted: 25 Nov 11 | Is there anything as pointless as compiling a family tree? We've all been waylaid by women gushing about their family research, about finding that an ancestor was a cabin boy on the Titanic or some such silliness, and like me you may have wished that they'd stuck with knitting to keep themselves occupied. |

Comments (58)

Chronic mispellings

Posted: 24 Nov 11 | I get the oeu in manoeuvre right, with a little ditty that runs through my head whenever I come across the word, but I can't get the au right in gauge without going to the Oxford. |

Comments (124)

The Gaudry gates

Posted: 21 Nov 11 | Long-held plans for an overpass of the railway line at Adamstown were ditched by the Labor government under the watch of Bryce Gaudry when its seat of Newcastle had an unassailable margin. Might not, though, the new Liberal member for Newcastle, Tim Owen, and his government offer new hope? |

Comments (43)

Status on the bus

Posted: 22 Nov 11 | Are you the sort of person who catches a bus? Or are you the sort of person who drives a car? Even just my limited experience on a government bus in the Lower Hunter has established for me that there is such a difference that I found my one bus trip in recent years unsettling! |

Comments (79)

Boozing at work

Posted: 18 Nov 11 | The business lunch was a thinly disguised binge for business mates meeting on the pretext that getting drunk together was necessary for a business relationship. It used to be that alcohol use at work was almost de rigueur for the ambitious, especially those in sales and management. |

Comments (44)

Maryland vigilantes

Posted: 17 Nov 11 | If they respond with force to an attack or a threat of an attack these men must be acting sensibly, because not reacting in number and with force is why individuals among them have been bashed and their families imperilled. |

Comments (85)

Who's that on the tube?

Posted: 16 Nov 11 | Is it fair? I mean, is it fair that a woman who steals a sandwich, as one woman appears to in a Newcastle East shop, be exposed to public disgrace? Should she be excused if she was hungry or penniless? |

Comments (27)

Kabaddi kabaddi kabaddi

Posted: 15 Nov 11 | Australia needs a new sport, because none of our major sports is a sport any longer. Cricket has drowned in its own tedium, rugby league is a promotion for domestic violence, rugby union promotes itself as the thinking man's thuggery, and soccer is still writhing about on the ground screaming for mother. |

Comments (89)