Unpaid tradesmen

Posted: 10 Mar 10 | I knew they were free fodder for building firms and banks, but I was not aware of the vulnerability of tradesmen to householders and other small clients who simply refuse to pay. |

Comments (43)

Shaving legs

Posted: 09 Mar 10 | Choosing an excuse for shaving legs is not the only challenge for a cyclist. There's also the question of how far up. And whether to apply a bottle tan. |

Comments (24)

Footballers' loyalties

Posted: 08 Mar 10 | If police make out their case against Wicks and Houston, it will appear that the club has not countered the tolerance or blind eye that was obvious when Andrew Johns admitted in 2007 that he'd been using drugs for a long time. |

Comments (76)

Other people die

Posted: 05 Mar 10 | My survival is proof that death happens only to other people, and so I am as untroubled by the RTA's roadside warnings SPEED KILLS as I used to be by cigarette packets' SMOKING KILLS. |

Comments (46)

Youthful confrontation

Posted: 04 Mar 10 | Piercings have expired as a statement, underwear has retreated to where it belongs below the belt, outrageous hairstyles are now admired, loaded-nappy jeans are worn only by dregs and young women are tucking in their wobbling belly jelly. |

Comments (25)

Communication overload

Posted: 03 Mar 10 | Personal communications must have multiplied 100 times in 20 years, meaning that for every phone call or letter (or telegram) I received 20 years ago I receive 100 text messages, mobile calls and emails today. |

Comments (26)

Phoney doctors

Posted: 26 Feb 10 | The board has failed to set standards for the use of the medical terms doctor, surgeon and physician, and health practitioners who've long been coveting or improperly using the title Dr have jumped in to claim it. |

Comments (41)

Live-alone rejects

Posted: 25 Feb 10 | We who are embraced by the political mantra of "working families" and the marketers' ideal of "happy families" regard live-alone men of certain ages with suspicion and live-alone women above a certain age and with no obvious reason for their aloneness as failures, rejects, unfortunates. |

Comments (26)

Health cover injustice

Posted: 24 Feb 10 | The Federal Government has its Lifetime Health Cover program encouraging young people to take private insurance for life, yet it does nothing to help retiring people maintain their cover for the rest of their life. |

Comments (26)

Undesignated nudity

Posted: 23 Feb 10 | Nudists like to tell us that getting their gear off is unburdening, that jumping around naked with a beach ball is freedom, that line dancing in the nude makes sense, but I reckon there's something else going on. |

Comments (24)

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. |

Comments (20)

DNA privacy

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? |

Comments (25)

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. |

Comments (40)

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! |

Comments (70)

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! |

Comments (35)