Opinion 
 Blogs 
 Jeff Corbett 

Jeff Corbett

Posted: 17/12/2008 | I've reached some points higher than others although I am well aware that you may not see any as reaching ankle height. | CommentsComments (8)
Posted: 16/12/2008 | Why the resounding silence that greeted the attack by Aboriginal leaders on Nicole Kidman's feeble attempts to play a didgeridoo? | CommentsComments (30)
Posted: 15/12/2008 | Some will say that Aboriginal people need protection because they are often uneducated and unsophisticated, but if that is the justification why are police not required to immediately notify Legal Aid of their intention to question an intellectually disabled person? | CommentsComments (25)
Posted: 12/12/2008 | Criminal libertarians used to be outraged by even the suggestion of CCTV cameras on the street. They'd plead for our right to privacy, they'd weep for the criminals caught on film, they'd be sick with worry that a married man might be filmed with his mistress. | CommentsComments (14)
Posted: 11/12/2008 | The emerging fashion is for couples to marry after having children, not before. Why? And why marry at any time? | CommentsComments (60)
Posted: 10/12/2008 | Workplace culture can be good or bad, welcoming or repelling, and not always in the places I've worked is there an explanation for either. | CommentsComments (34)
Posted: 9/12/2008 | A great deal of the behaviour of soccer's fans and players can be fairly described as infantile. | CommentsComments (108)
Posted: 8/12/2008 | The reappearance of the golliwog suggests that the PC frenzy has burnt itself out. | CommentsComments (18)
Posted: 5/12/2008 | I tell you about the banh mi to point out that we have room to improve that great Australian staple, the salad roll. | CommentsComments (7)
Posted: 4/12/2008 | We're getting by with energy-efficient lights and our neighbours are putting up thousands of Christmas lights. | CommentsComments (14)
Posted: 3/12/2008 | Often it is movement, not the image, that alerts me to the approach of a car at an intersection, and I don't think it's a result of poor eyesight or attention. | CommentsComments (6)
Posted: 2/12/2008 | Clergy have tried fire and brimstone, MP3 sermons and knees ups with guitar to try to stem the rush to the freedom of the secular world, all with spectacular failure. | CommentsComments (68)
Posted: 1/12/2008 | The statistics are horrifying but the news reports of individual children drowning in backyard pools are worse. | CommentsComments (24)
Posted: 28/11/2008 | You're likely to see a fellow in the peculiar urinating stance by the side of the road at any old time, and even trees just a few metres away are too far. | CommentsComments (8)
Posted: 27/11/2008 | Like almost all good food, a good ham is one made by a person rather than a machine and, above all, produced by a person who cares about the result. | CommentsComments (9)
Posted: 26/11/2008 | The banks' refusal to lend on land they believe has a finite life will destroy the market for waterfront properties a long time before water inundates them. | CommentsComments (20)
Posted: 25/11/2008 | It was going to be a simple call to compare the cost of a faster broadband service, but three days later I'm close to defeat. | CommentsComments (21)
Posted: 24/11/2008 | I don't think I ever picked a full-size tomato without maggots or a caterpillar. This year, at long last, I appear to have the answer. | CommentsComments (7)
Posted: 20/11/2008 | Australians whose work justifies national acclaim, among them scientists and thinkers and entrepreneurs, never attain the fame reserved for people who pretend they are someone else to help easily manipulated people escape their own lives briefly. | CommentsComments (5)
Posted: 19/11/2008 | He does masturbate in his car where the act can't be seen and so far as he's concerned if the act can't be seen it's not in public. | CommentsComments (36)
Posted: 18/11/2008 | The keeping of chooks is suddenly the new black, the new mark of someone who cares about the world and the temple that is their body. | CommentsComments (14)
Posted: 17/11/2008 | She'll be delighted if you say as you hand over a painted concrete platypus that you thought of her as soon as you saw the colour. | CommentsComments (13)
Posted: 14/11/2008 | So far as the debate about the worth of the rail line that divides inner Newcastle is concerned, there have been precious few facts to cause any pause for thought. | CommentsComments (80)
Posted: 13/11/2008 | There is a growing divide among Australians. There are those who receive and those who pay. | CommentsComments (32)
Posted: 12/11/2008 | As it goes weekly Newcastle Farmers Market at Broadmeadow showground becomes viable as a home's main source of fresh food. | CommentsComments (8)
Posted: 11/11/2008 | It was the banks' gluttony that helped create the property boom and that was alone responsible for the property crash. | CommentsComments (4)
Posted: 10/11/2008 | Is the world not better off without Amrozi, Samudra and Mukhlas? | CommentsComments (8)
Posted: 7/11/2008 | I'd say a scowl is more effective, or more effective than my attempt at a smile. | CommentsComments (19)
Posted: 6/11/2008 | One has flourished under the protection of legislation and an especially righteous bureaucracy. That is the Occupational Health and Safety movement. | CommentsComments (18)
Posted: 5/11/2008 | I am, I admit, an exercise evangelist, and I'll admit that I don't think I've ever been able to persuade a non-exerciser to get out there and at it. | CommentsComments (5)
Posted: 4/11/2008 | Boisterous inebriation is the new medal of patriotism, the new social expression. | CommentsComments (9)
Posted: 31/10/2008 | It has been clear for longer than the modern wave of vandalism that most teenagers become independent, at least in the sense of control, of their parents well before the age of 18. | CommentsComments (9)
Posted: 30/10/2008 | Income tax is so erratically applied that it is largely PAYE workers who are left with the burden - we have nowhere to hide - but cutting some workers out for very, very special treatment rankles. | CommentsComments (16)
Posted: 27/10/2008 | The only honorific with an expanding base is Dr. It seems that everyone who feels they're due a little more status resorts to the title. | CommentsComments (18)
Posted: 24/10/2008 | Without doubt those who work credibility most successfully are the most successful con men. | CommentsComments (4)
Posted: 23/10/2008 | It's official: drinking every day makes you happier than not drinking every day! | CommentsComments (2)
Posted: 22/10/2008 | Perhaps I like the sense that I rescue old cars, like people collect stray dogs and cats. But rather, I think, I prefer the character of old bombs over the featureless silence of new cars. | CommentsComments (5)
Posted: 21/10/2008 | A cliche can be trite, meaningless, obfuscating or just overused, but soon enough it will be annoying. | CommentsComments (10)
Posted: 20/10/2008 | More people now, more families, than for a very long time are finding themselves suddenly out on the street as the banks' greed and irresponsibility bites. | CommentsComments (7)
Posted: 17/10/2008 | The youths are using their individual tags to deface someone else's property, they are leaving their calling card as boastful identification for their fellows, so why shouldn't we all have the privilege of that identification? | CommentsComments (15)
Posted: 16/10/2008 | Not all changes in our birdlife are to be abhored even if the causes of those changes are to be regretted. | CommentsComments (3)
Posted: 15/10/2008 | There he was when the police arrived, propped up with a schooner and not the least awkward about wearing his dressing gown. | CommentsComments (5)
Posted: 14/10/2008 | We don't care whether the Newcastle rail line stays or goes because we shop elsewhere and we don't use the train anyway. | CommentsComments (39)
Posted: 13/10/2008 | If you have red hair you'll understand how people with red hair have cornered the market in intelligence. | CommentsComments (15)
Posted: 25/09/2008 | Do we become more sensible as we age or do we age as we become more sensible? | CommentsComments (18)
Posted: 24/09/2008 | I've tried many organic ways of protecting tomatoes and other fruit from fruit fly, and, sadly, not one of them has worked. | CommentsComments (13)
Posted: 23/09/2008 | The club lists on its big poster promoting the kids bingo another purpose, teaching children to "learn and recognise big numbers". Might this other purpose be taking us closer to yet another purpose? | CommentsComments (37)
Posted: 22/09/2008 | Let's lift the public confidence in the kangaroo harvesting process, change the name of the meat from kangaroo (we don't call beef cow), and get buxom beauties promoting it at free public barbecues. | CommentsComments (53)
Posted: 19/09/2008 | I've noticed over the years that on-site holiday vans are great while they're great and a pain in the proverbial when they're not. | CommentsComments (4)
Posted: 18/09/2008 | Men will be swapping the tongs for a peel soon, because the new barbecue is a wood-fired pizza oven. | CommentsComments (8)
Posted: 17/09/2008 | Still wearing the bag of fruit are politicians, African dictators, footballers denying sex assault, bikies in court, real estate agents, lawyers, financial advisers and raceday spivs. | CommentsComments (16)
Posted: 16/09/2008 | One in 10 adults in NSW and one in five Novocastrians didn't vote in the local government elections at the weekend, and they did us a great favour. | CommentsComments (32)
Posted: 15/09/2008 | There may be moral considerations that attach to the spending of $500 on a rabbit, but I would say today that they apply only if we would spend the $500 on a more deserving cause otherwise. | CommentsComments (6)
Posted: 11/09/2008 | We need a dog that goes beyond alerting to protecting, and I think protective dog is a better term than guard dog. Effectively protective dog. | CommentsComments (27)
Posted: 10/09/2008 | Many Newcastle and Maitland people will recall being impressed by the performance of the administrator who replaced their sacked council. No politics, no prevarication, none of the disgraceful nonsense that passes now for debate, no point scoring. | CommentsComments (47)
Posted: 9/09/2008 | Maybe, one day, we'll be reduced to providing the seed, and if that's the case it is doubtful that we'll have the privilege of, err, sowing it. | CommentsComments (9)
Posted: 8/09/2008 | This law has been around for seven years but it appears that only in the past few months has its application lost the essential elements of common sense and reasonableness. | CommentsComments (7)
Posted: 5/09/2008 | The law says I am entitled to defend myself, my family and my property with a force I believe at the time to be necessary but the law does not allow me to keep a weapon for that purpose. | CommentsComments (33)
Posted: 4/09/2008 | The humanitarian grounds often cited in support of a Pacific Islander guest worker program don't make the importing of coolies any more acceptable. | CommentsComments (7)
Posted: 3/09/2008 | The interest rate hit 17 per cent five years after we bought! Makes today's 9.something almost generous. | CommentsComments (5)
Posted: 2/09/2008 | A couple of the essential steps to good coffee surprise me: ground coffee has a fresh life of only a few minutes and the quality of the coffee grinder, not of the coffee machine, is critical. | CommentsComments (25)
Posted: 1/09/2008 | Most people don't actually like coffee, which is the only explanation I can come up with for their continuing to drink dishwater. | CommentsComments (13)
Posted: 27/08/2008 | Once again I was reminded of the advantages of village life - relaxed pace, a friendly ambience and a sense of everyone being in it together. | CommentsComments (25)
Posted: 26/08/2008 | One of my workmates, a young woman, tells me the female funnel that allows women to pee standing is becoming common at concerts where the queues for the ladies are horrendous. | CommentsComments (7)
Posted: 25/08/2008 | I'm over Australia's version of participation in the Olympics. There's nothing in it but jingoistic entertainment and lost opportunity to be part of the real world rather than just the world of medal-count nations. | CommentsComments (17)
Posted: 21/08/2008 | We have become aware of the passion of the Japanese for whale meat, and at the same time our tastes in food have become much more international. | CommentsComments (39)
Posted: 20/08/2008 | People say that Nicole Kidman is beautiful, but every woman in my life is more attractive than she is. | CommentsComments (7)
Posted: 19/08/2008 | The raging popularity of farmers' markets and the booming interest in home cooking are strong evidence that we're returning to the days of fresh is best. | CommentsComments (7)
Posted: 18/08/2008 | The systematic deleting or avoiding commercial television's commercials may be akin to stealing - we tune in with fingers crossed. | CommentsComments (8)
Posted: 15/08/2008 | I've offered to to install a wrap-around urinal, although at $700 plus plumbing and remodelling it does seem to be expensive peace and she's sticking with the sit-or-wrap ultimatum. | CommentsComments (22)
Posted: 14/08/2008 | It must be one of the hardest things a parent can do, sending their child off to a day of bullying, distress and fear at school. I don't think I could do it. | CommentsComments (13)
Posted: 13/08/2008 | The renaming of Dangar Park is not just do-gooding gone mad, it is do-gooding gone irreconcilably mad. | CommentsComments (40)
Posted: 12/08/2008 | If Scientology and the Anglican and Catholic churches and the Little Pebble sect enjoy tax-free status, why should not the Church of Jestus? | CommentsComments (15)
Posted: 11/08/2008 | The houses of modern architecture strike me as devoid of grace and charm to the point that they are ugly. | CommentsComments (5)
Posted: 8/08/2008 | Four-wheel-drivers can already sense the condemnation. Look one in the eye today and shake your head. | CommentsComments (18)
Posted: 7/08/2008 | To get the disabled parking card they need a doctor to declare that they are "detrimentally affected as a result of walking 100 metres", and to achieve that they need to tell a good story or find a friendly doctor. | CommentsComments (19)
Posted: 6/08/2008 | Wouldn't it be wonderful if Street View carried a list of the names and addresses of privacy objectors so we could check out their homes! | CommentsComments (10)
Posted: 5/08/2008 | After a series of clicks I ended up with lung cancer on the list of probabilities, just ahead of tuberculosis and leukaemia. | CommentsComments (2)
Posted: 4/08/2008 | If women feel the need as police officers to adopt a macho plod to win the respect of their fellows and/or the public, equality is a myth. | CommentsComments (4)
Posted: 1/08/2008 | Just as the decision has been withdrawn from the individual in the case of bike helmets, seatbelts, firearms and driving at high speed, so it should be in the case of smoking. | CommentsComments (10)
Posted: 31/07/2008 | The Hunter Region's most senior police officer says agreeing out of court this week to add half an hour to the curfew and closing times of inner Newcastle hotels was a good result for the city. | CommentsComments (28)
Posted: 30/07/2008 | Men choose to drive, and women choose men to drive, because women are lousy drivers. | CommentsComments (22)
Posted: 29/07/2008 | There is no shortage of people being ripped off by premium SMS companies charging, through Telstra, for services the customer did not seek or approve. | CommentsComments (11)
Posted: 28/07/2008 | With the incentives mounting week by week, more people will take up cycling as a means of transport when it is safe to do so. | CommentsComments (51)
Posted: 22/07/2008 | We wait for something to happen, we wait for retirement to retrieve from a super fund the life we've banked. | CommentsComments (4)
Posted: 21/07/2008 | We can't vote against the RTA but we can vote against the government that fails to rein in its excesses. | CommentsComments (6)
Posted: 18/07/2008 | One of the community's great problems is the imbalance of wealth, and so grand theft that goes towards correcting that imbalance might not be such a bad thing. | CommentsComments (9)
Posted: 17/07/2008 | There are many threads to World Youth Day. What's your take on it all? | CommentsComments (12)
Posted: 16/07/2008 | Men, so women insist, are full of something other than the flu virus when they're confiding how ill they are with the flu. | CommentsComments (1)
Posted: 15/07/2008 | Charging your own clients on behalf of firms in an industry notorious for questionable practices is always going to be dubious business. | CommentsComments (6)
Posted: 14/07/2008 | In this day of communication and so-called customer service we're more powerless than ever, more easily fobbed off, more surely exhausted. | CommentsComments (7)
Posted: 11/07/2008 | It always strikes me that it would have been a much happier celebration had the celebrated been celebrating too. | CommentsComments (7)
Posted: 10/07/2008 | We stopped short. We should have moved onto the remaining space that serves no purpose other than meeting the expectations of society. | CommentsComments (2)
Posted: 9/07/2008 | People of dark skin should be no more protected from the insults of yobbos than are people of other skin tones, and to suggest that they need to be is an insult. | CommentsComments (4)
Posted: 8/07/2008 | Young people seem to have developed a dependence on media noise pumped through speakers and earphones. | CommentsComments (4)
Posted: 7/07/2008 | Will the challenges weaken or strengthen the public's resolve against the use of images of naked children? And where will it end? | CommentsComments (14)
Posted: 4/07/2008 | Vic told his grandson he was not interested in him getting his licence; he was interested in him staying alive on the roads for the next 70 years or so. | CommentsComments (0)
Posted: 3/07/2008 | A retired person who has lost touch with his or her peers, who doesn't have the confidence or the opportunity to create new friendships, is in strife. | CommentsComments (4)
Posted: 2/07/2008 | The Iemma Government has made it an offence carrying a fine of up to $5500 to refuse to comply with a direction to stop causing "annoyance or inconvenience" to participants in a World Youth Day event! | CommentsComments (12)
Posted: 1/07/2008 | Perhaps the operators of the smaller bars will have a more direct and personal influence on the behaviour and measure of patrons. | CommentsComments (14)
Posted: 27/06/2008 | Two years ago I wrote a column mocking the people of the Central Coast and their ringleader who'd spent $5300 on a heart operation for a retarded stray cat. | CommentsComments (9)
Posted: 26/06/2008 | The difference between what appeared to be the reality and Cabcharge's story had become a point of light relief. | CommentsComments (9)
Posted: 25/06/2008 | Should Australians leaving the country be given a sheet of tips on good behaviour? What should be at the top? | CommentsComments (5)
Posted: 23/06/2008 | The c-bomb is the last taboo word in Australia and perhaps the Western world. That puzzles me. | CommentsComments (11)
Posted: 19/06/2008 | Men of the dark triad would hardly prosper in our society but prosper they do in a fashion nice guys can only dream about! | CommentsComments (3)
Posted: 18/06/2008 | The accelerating price of petrol, diesel and gas is going to colour us all green whether we like it or not. | CommentsComments (5)
Posted: 17/06/2008 | Are the barbarians who hunt pigs with dogs far removed from the four-wheel-driving sadists mowing down Morisset Hospital's tame roos. | CommentsComments (2)
Posted: 16/06/2008 | Since most sports cyclists can at least match the speed of a motor-assisted pedal cycle or electric scooter, there would be an inconsistency in rules for one and not the other. | CommentsComments (10)
Posted: 13/06/2008 | Men have been the losers in all manner of government-sanctioned discrimination, and we're about to be the losers again. | CommentsComments (15)
Posted: 12/06/2008 | Single mothers with small children, unemployed people, poorly employed people, Aboriginal people, and people without long and flawless rental history are not in the race. | CommentsComments (6)
Posted: 11/06/2008 | Not everyone will see this as a step forward. Let the courts decide, they'll harrumph, but the great majority will cheer the injecting of a few human cells into a bureaucracy. | CommentsComments (0)
Posted: 10/06/2008 | We do think of tattoos as we will, and the result of that is that prominent tatts disqualify the wearer from certain occupations. | CommentsComments (33)
Posted: 5/06/2008 | At the moment we eat mostly because the time of a set meal has arrived, not because we're hungry. | CommentsComments (3)
Posted: 4/06/2008 | Systems and predictions based on the moon are usually seen as the stuff of lunatics, but I've seen strong evidence over the years that one particular system has a sound base. | CommentsComments (4)
Posted: 3/06/2008 | Idiocy is one personal quality that deserves discrimination, and few idiots declare their idiocy as effectively as someone with tattoos down the length of one arm. | CommentsComments (60)
Posted: 2/06/2008 | There is no doubt that when government moves to formally recognise both lesbian lovers as mothers of the same child we are entering an era of change. | CommentsComments (4)
Posted: 30/05/2008 | Our preferences and prejudices should have no bearing on our opinion of a law recognising the fact that both partners of a lesbian relationship can be and often are both parents of children. | CommentsComments (11)
Posted: 29/05/2008 | It is time Lake Macquarie City Council embarked on a campaign to reclaim usurped public land around Lake Macquarie's waterfront. | CommentsComments (1)
Posted: 28/05/2008 | Most people spend most of their working lives, as I have done, paying for a house that the next generation is likely to demolish. | CommentsComments (5)
Posted: 27/05/2008 | I reckon the use of nine cents is deceptive because, one, there is no such money and, two, its purpose is to be invisible, unnoticed, by the buyer. | CommentsComments (2)
Posted: 26/05/2008 | The art world seems to believe that the legality of its work should not be assessed by mere police, that all that is sheltered by the umbrella called art should be sheltered from the law. | CommentsComments (11)
Posted: 22/05/2008 | On this rare occasion am I thinking too sympathetically? Are pensioners whingeing their way to the bank? | CommentsComments (3)
Posted: 21/05/2008 | Who has the greater right, me to be free of uninvited waste dumped at my home or business to be free to dump that waste at my home uninvited? | CommentsComments (7)
Posted: 20/05/2008 | The age component of anti-discrimination law does not appear to have reduced discrimination against people of Tony's age, and if that is right it serves only to disadvantage him and others. | CommentsComments (6)
Posted: 19/05/2008 | Why should people not in hospital be deprived of what they may see as the privilege of a painless death at a time of their choosing? | CommentsComments (3)
Posted: 15/05/2008 | Is it unreasonable to expect a person aged 16 or 17 to accept full responsibility for their criminal behaviour? | CommentsComments (7)
Posted: 14/05/2008 | I sense that as a community we should do more, that we need to do more, not just for the Peters but for all those struggling with burdens of that order. | CommentsComments (4)
Posted: 13/05/2008 | It's not just a matter of the new parents inflicting a name with a weird spelling on their baby, they're inflicting it on all Australia. | CommentsComments (11)
Posted: 12/05/2008 | Crime, bitterness, poor health, financial hardship and idleness are great sources of stress and thus unhappiness, and luckily these are things our governments can actually do something about. | CommentsComments (2)
Posted: 9/05/2008 | JEFF CORBETT: If parents hold that their liability diminishes as the child gets older, the growing child's liability should increase to take up the shortfall. | CommentsComments (4)
Posted: 8/05/2008 |  JEFF CORBETT: Should we have an overnight cat curfew? | CommentsComments (12)
Posted: 7/05/2008 | JEFF CORBETT: Should we have shows that pander to base urges at the expense of not only individuals but an entire class of people? | CommentsComments (5)
Posted: 7/05/2008 | JEFF CORBETT: Strawberries that are devoid of flavour yet look more like strawberries than strawberries, watermelon that are little more than a watery texture, apples that have been 10 months in cold storage and are eager to rot, plums too sour to bite, peaches dry and floury, rockmelons with barely any flavour, oranges that are too sour or too watery. | CommentsComments (5)
Posted: 6/05/2008 | How can we inject virility into a nation of young males in the no man's land between the genders? | CommentsComments (2)
Posted: 3/05/2008 | Do you have an idea for a kitchen gadget, useful or useless? Or do you have one to add to my Top Ten Useless Kitchen Gadgets? | CommentsComments (0)
Posted: 2/05/2008 | The eroding of manners seems to have diluted a respect for others' right to hold a different opinion. | CommentsComments (0)
Posted: 1/05/2008 | So why does a meal at a catered wedding reception cost more than an al-la-carte meal in so many restaurants? | CommentsComments (6)
Posted: 30/04/2008 | Australia is brimful of people desperate for reasons to ride a bicycle. | CommentsComments (8)
Posted: 29/04/2008 | Do you have an allergy or food sensitivity that exposes you to the accuracy of food processors' ingredients lists? | CommentsComments (6)
Posted: 18/04/2008 | The neighbourhood dispute is a rich seam. What's yours? | CommentsComments (3)
Posted: 17/04/2008 | What are your favourite habits of fumbling, blundering drivers? | CommentsComments (8)