ABC Radio Australia guest (science reporter Dr Karl) talking about global warming and possible ways the nation might conserve water.
“It takes over 50kg of water to produce 1kg of beef…that’s kind of wasteful”
An incredulous sounding host quickly interjects:
“It may well be but we’re not going to stop eating beef. End of”
Some scenarios are clearly just not up for discussion.
Have to admit I laughed out loud as the host quickly shut down that particular train of thought.
“One of the great things Canberra has going for it is low expectations”
A verbatim quote from an ABC Canberra radio interview with a representative from the company running a risky competition within Australia to get one of five hundred free holidays to the much maligned capital of Australia, Canberra in return for writing about the experience on social media.
As the report pointed out a similar exercise by the national airline Quantas backfired but clearly one person on the marketing team thinks even bad publicity would be good publicity and the public perception couldn’t possibly get any lower.
Scottish born American talk show comedian Craig Ferguson and Australian born film Actor Guy Pearce ended up apologising for running down Canberra in a previous light hearted interview on the American show which is shown in Australia on one of the free to air digital channels.
I’ve always loved Canberra but probably because it has, for me, an oddly European aesthetic and feels slightly out of place when compared with the rest of Australia. I await the outcome of the competition with interest.
Image by ~Prescott under this creative commons licence
Australian radio quiz asks for name of London Mayor.Amazingly one caller knows his first name.”So it’s Boris..?” Confident answer: “Yeltsin”
Median property rental in Sydney Australia is now AU$460 per week(£309GBP) with Darwin now in excess of AU$500 (£336) per week.
Europe had it coming says Australia’s coalition PM according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Very probably. When I lived there for a short while I was always impressed as to how Australia had not let the availability of easy credit grow rampant.
Huge deposits were required to obtain a mortgage and shoppers were encouraged to put items they could not afford on ‘lay by’ (where an item is reserved and payments made weekly or monthly towards it. Only when these payments were completed did the consumer obtain the item from the store) rather than the ‘buy now, worry about paying for it later’ culture that took hold in the UK and in parts of Europe.
Europe had it coming, says PM
Peter Martin and Matt O’sullivan
The Sydney Morning Herald
16 Jan 2012
THE Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has rubbed salt into the wounds of European nations reeling from weekend credit downgrades, declaring they had it coming for avoiding tough decisions. Speaking after Standard & Poor’s stripped France and Austria of…read more…
“The committee was given examples of successful parenting and fostering by gay and lesbian couples and in these case studies, adoption provided permanence, stability and security so important to children,” she said.
“However, I am also aware that there are very deeply held, divergent views on this issue and that is why a decision on this matter will not be taken at this stage.”
The Australian state of New South Wales decides that it cannot obtain a consensus on changing the state law to enable same sex couples to adopt even though individuals who happen to be gay can already adopt.
I was only listening to a phone-in on ABC Canberra radio the other day which was debating the culture of drinking amongst the young in Australia.Whilst Australia is by no means embroiled in the kind of excessive alcohol consumption of the United Kingdom (see league table for alcohol consumption by country but the rise in the level of young people taking part in acts of binge drinking is perceived to have increased.
Obviously Australia is a somewhat more macho culture where hard drinking can be seen as part of the supposed attraction of machismo. Witness the bare essential approach of many Australian pubs and bars and the bizarre availability of drive through ‘bottle shops’ (off licenses as we call them in the UK) to see the place drinking alcohol has in the culture.
Interestingly binge drinking has not been at the levels ‘enjoyed’ by the UK of late. Australian politicians are getting concerned in a way that British politicians do not seem to (our brilliant solution to binge drinking was to increase the hours that pubs and clubs open in the hope that our youth culture would suddenly go all European and be less likely to consume the greatest amount of alcohol in the shortest available time frame).
Sculling, by the way is an Australian term for knocking back alcohol. Cultural differences and all that.
