OH MY God I am a SPUD

If I want kids maybe I should opt for a salary miner. What are you?

From the SMH and AAP today....

SPUDS and freemales on the rise
March 12, 2008 - 12:32PM

First there were DINKs (dual income, no kids) and SINKs (single income, no kids) - now Australia is experiencing the rise of the SPUD (single person urban dwelling), not to mention the "freemale".
In a wide-ranging new geo-demographic survey of the country, researchers have found that unmarried women now outnumber married women for the first time since World War I.
The Mosaic 2008 analysis reveals 51.4 per cent of women are opting for the singles lifestyle in a new phenomenon billed as "Bridget Jones meets Sex and the City".
The survey also estimates that up to a quarter of women will never have children, while SPUDs account for more than 25 per cent of all dwellings in Australia - a figure that's expected to soar over the next 30 years.
"Mosaic 2008 offers us new levels of insight into where Australians live and work, how much they earn and spend, what their family situation is and what they do with their spare time," Graham Plant, of research firm Pacific Micromarketing, said.
"It draws on richer data sources and drills down further to the household level than any other similar analysis.
"Many of the new trends identified, ask serious questions of businesses and government: for example, what does the rise of the SPUD mean for transport and utility service providers and grocery retailers, not to mention the energy-efficiency of our cities?"
Other findings in Mosaic 2008 include:
50 per cent of all Australians have one parent born overseas, of whom only 14 per cent were born in the UK;
Africa, India, Indonesia, Singapore and China are the fastest-growing sources of immigrants;
So-called salary miners - high-income earners in younger households in remote mining communities, with high disposable incomes and low housing costs - account for 0.6 per cent of the population;
The proportion of baby boomers aged 65+ is expected to double to 25 per cent of the total Australian population by 2038.
Mr Plant said the Mosaic findings provided governments, private and other sectors with invaluable data to better plan for the future.
"In a shifting and fragmenting consumer landscape, all enterprises need to work harder to understand their customers better," he said.
"Companies should be planning products and services that their customers will want over the next decade, not what they wanted five years ago."
Mosaic 2008 was compiled from data in the last Australian census and other sources, Pacific Micromarketing said.

A long time coming

The Prime Minister of Australia apologises to the Stolen Generation


Today I joined many Australians to hear Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologise to the stolen generations. With heavy rain above us and my brolly sheltering some of my fellow attendees we witnessed what was truly a historic occassion. It was brilliant. Truly magnificent.

Goodbye Mr Howard

Going......



.....Going



Gone!

Goodbye.

[pics by Nic www.nicolemanktelow.com]

And now come the celebrations!

After Kevin Rudd made his victory speech the cops arrived. Grinning like school boys they knew the reason behind our celebrations as they tapped on my door – covered in a Kevin Rudd poster. They saw a bunch of 30 somethings glued to the television. They knew their time was wasted and politely left.

Ok we may have been a little loud. But we have waited 11 long years for this fabulous moment – Labor taking 86 seats, Coalition 62 - Howard losing his own seat – icing on the cake. Trumped by not just a journalist but an ABC Journalist. Pure Gold.

We didn’t listen to Howard’s concession speech. Instead we sang loudly to The Angels’ love song 'Am I Ever Going to See Your Face Again?
Hopefully never! Enjoy the pics.


Penny and Alex arrive, Majella meets them at the door



Friends enjoy the electoral coverage


Majella and Kev






Alex declares victory, Kate laughs

For Love or Money

It took 10 years for this bloke to get money for his film

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Australian Film Institute’s (AFI) awards.

I was an invited guest of a wealth manager which also sponsored the AFI Award for Best Screenplay. The price was $10,000 and would be awarded to the winner to “help further their story-telling career”.

Incidentally the wealth manager was the only financial services firm among the corporate sponsors.

During light refreshments, I had the pleasure of meeting Keith Richards, the screenwriter of the movie Clubland.

It took him 10 years to raise money for his movie. When he finally did get to make his movie, it took just two-and-a-half weeks since its release to reach $1 million at the box office. This was despite competition from the blockbusters such as Shrek 3 and Harry Potter.

As a finance journo it’s hard to conceive that a fund manager would take that long to raise money for their fund.

Some funds can raise over $150 million from one investor even before they go to market. For many fund managers, $10,000 would just pay for a media dinner (and post drinks).

Yes life can be grand in financial services but Richards still looked happy. I bid him farewell as he joined his fellow writers over meat pies and bubbles.


Journos enjoy the light refreshments

The day I agreed with Miranda Devine

“The streets have been swarming with police all week, pumped up and with nothing to do” – M Devine

OMG! My immediate thought when reading Sunday’s papers? “Cripes I need my head read’. I actually agreed with Miranda Devine. Her column attacked the behaviour of the police during APEC. Specifically she wrote about this bloke.

On Friday, a “respectable, bespectacled, middle-aged accountant in a Hawaiian shirt” was forcibly arrested for simply crossing the road. It gets worse. During the arrest, the poor bugger was trying to protect his glasses and instead was set upon by a group of cops who handcuffed him, put him in a cell with an ice addict and denied him legal assistance.

This was Sydney and this bloke is a mate of Miranda. In fact, she and her husband are godparents to his daughter.

She wrote.
“Security overkill in Sydney was just a big show, designed not to protect anyone from terrorists but to stymie protestors.”

She continues…”It’s a sign of an emasculated rudderless police force, with systemic small-man syndrome, acting like bullies in an attempt to cover up weakness, and chronic dysfunction.”

I wasn’t at the APEC rally but my mate Sam was. Her text to me that Saturday morning was frantic. “Holy fuck, there r riot police, vans & helicopters everywhere. They want 2 scare people feel sick”.

On Sunday, Bondi residents were visibly irritated and in fact outraged as they couldn’t even swim in a public beach because Janet Howard and the APEC ladies were out to lunch (most of them women so I am not going to bother about political correctness).

We’ve been so complacent about the anti-terrorism laws. Who cares if Muslims get locked up or an Indian doctor gets deported without any legal case against him. APEC showed us what sweeping police powers could do to people in the age of terror. Even to bespectacled middle aged men from the North Shore.

Is it time?

Last night I went to Gleebooks to listen to election strategist extraordinaire Antony Green ‘in conversation” with Crikey’s Christian Kerr.

Christian was flogging his book, “Crikey’s Election guide”

The chattering classes packed the room so of course Sam and I were delighted to be among friends and even more so with the complimentary alcohol.

Is it time?, were one of the questions the men grappled with. Green noted that unlike the 2004 election, the polls this time have been very consistent – pointing to a Labor victory.

Both were very hesitant to predict an outcome and believed Howard still had the economy as his trump card. With successive interest rate rises and homes defaulting in the Hills district in NSW, who knows what can happen. Personally, I reckon It’s Time.

Some choice quotes from the evening:

From Antony....
“The shire is filled with people who have made it from Bankstown and over the Menai bridge, just so that they can get away from the wogs”
“If the Coalition loses Lindsay they would have truly lost the spiritual home of Howard’s battlers”
“John Howard's meaning of One Australia is One Wollstonecraft”

From Christian...
“All lower middle class people in Earlwood aspire to live on the North Shore. It must be nice for John Howard's family to know that their son lives near North Sydney station”
“Wentworth is a seat where the effluent meets the affluent. Turnbull will keep his seat simply because of own fabulousness,”

My catastrophe for the night was spilling red wine over my white trench coat from Cue. The MC from Gleebooks scolded me when I told her I didn't have nappy san at home.

"You must always have nappy san at home. It's the only way you can get rid of these stains," she said.

http://www.gleebooks.com.au/

Striptease

This bloke is fund manager and we were on our way to a strip club.

As a finance journalist, the majority of my time spent away is at industry conferences. I’ve travelled to Melbourne, Hobart, Tasmania, Cairns, Perth, Brisvegas and too many times to the Gold Coast. For me, it can be a bit of a chore. For many, however, it’s a time to go nuts.

So now I hear Kevin07 visited a strip club – four years ago – as the shadow spokesperson for Foreign Affair’s. Who cares?

It was some Government overseas jaunt, and for me the only ‘wrongdoing’ is that it was a tax funded trip. But are we nit picking? I had this conversation last night with the managing director of a global ***. He admitted to me that at a conference he too went to a strip club “out of interest”. I admitted to him that I also went to a strip club “out of interest”. And yes I too, was at a conference.

It was in Perth and the evening began at a restaurant. Three bottles of wine and two cocktails later, I was being driven around in a Limousine, champagne flute in hand. Bored after going to Perth’s all of two great bars, I suggested we go to a strip club - one of the 150 things I wanted to do before I died.

It was interesting. Funnily I did get approached by a bloke with $50 in his hand. Apparently this gesture is some protocol for a private lap dance. Odd, I wasn’t scantily dressed (But then again I was wearing Supre)….. I could have done with the extra cash but I declined. I spotted some blokes walk in with plastic shoes and guessed that they were superannuation fund trustees. One of my fund manager’s dared me to ask them and I was right. They were indeed trustees.

Which now leads me to my point – We were at a conference paid for by our employers. Investors and superannuation fund members could be concerned that the fees that they pay should not go to funding such trips.

Unlike Kevin07, of course, fund managers and trustees are not elected to public office. But quite frankly I’d rather have my leader go to a strip club then lock up women and children in detention centres, lie about parents throwing their children overboard, ignore the Kyoto protocol, introduce a dodgy piece of industrial relations and walk down the corridor with Mark Tubby Taylor.

Ps. The strip club was rather boring. My only concern – the ladies were not contributing a portion of their savings to superannuation. I recommended they join the industry superannuation fund Hostplus. They liked the idea.

My Washing Line

Thought for the Day

If I had a choice between................

Option A

Or

Option B

To lead my country. I would choose Option A. What would your choice be?

Doggy speak

From the Glebe this week...



Balmain pet psychic Lynn Overhill has started a new business talking to animals.

Don’t give us Rock Stars just give us the True Believers

Well, this is the sweetest victory of all. This is a victory for the true believers: the people who, in difficult times, have kept the faith,” Keating said in 1993 after he won an election no one thought he’d win.

Since Keating’s left politics, it’s hard to imagine the same level of passion in any of our politicians.
I thought last night it would be different when I aattended the book launch of Australian Arts: Where the Bloody Hell Are You at the Seymour Centre.

The speakers included Minister for the Arts & Sport George Brandis and Shadow Minister for the Arts Peter Garrett.

As a former artist himself, I expected Garret to be more thought provoking in his discussion with Brandis. He was not and the evening was a flop.

It was all so polite and nice. But real leaders are not about sugar and spice. Keating would have mauled Brandis last night.

Let’s be honest about it, there is no doubt that when the Labor Party welcomed Garrett into the party it was because of the popularity he garnered as lead singer of Midnight Oil.

Here is a man that wrote evocative lyrics about our life and times. Forget about the power, the man was about passion.

Last night, however, he had no passion.

Brandis gave his predictable rubbish about how arts should not be about elitism, that perhaps arts advocates like the Cate Blanchett and the Australian Ballet should do more to promote arts in the community (because of course we can’t be arsed by giving money). He also spoke about the ‘commitment’ that cabinet ministers have towards the arts.

Apparently Ruddock has an extensive Aboriginal collection. Who cares? I mean who would be able to go Ruddock’s home to view this collection (um and let’s not go there about copyright issues) and who exactly wants to see Downer’s Ken Done collection.

And according to Brandis the US had no artistic life before World War II.

He George Brandis is a man that clearly has no idea about his portfolio.

Shouldn’t Garrett have asked the questions that as Arts and Sports minister, how much money has Brandis allocated to sports compared to arts? And if we are talking about wanting to export our arts industry shouldn’t foster our own local industry first?

To be fair to Garrett, he did say that as an industry, arts begin in the homes and in the local theatre and that is the basis to build an industry on.

He also quoted Keating. But instead of just quoting him, he should have had Keating’s balls to counteract the comments made by Brandis.


As much as I despise Howard I can respect him on the basis that he has fashioned this country to reflect his small mindedness, his pettiness, his stupidity. He has not compromised on who he is.

Arts are in trouble. There is no connect or support for local artists. There is neither commitment.

I wanted Garrett to articulate my frustrations, to take my screams at my television and present them to Brandis. I am sure Keating or Whitlam would have.

In the meantime I suspect that Brandis will return to Cabinet and allocate a further $500 million to sport.

Later that evening, my sister (who is an artist), her husband and I, retired to the Duck & Swan. We drank the house red and feasted on twisties which we pretended was a cheese platter.

The Bra (Leb) Boys

“I can guarantee you Christine that in two year’s time these blokes will be behind bars. I’d like to see where those A-listers will be then.”
- Sydney Detective

Guess What? I am going to write a documentary about Leb boys from Lakemba. I’d get some Hollywood Star to narrate the film. I don’t who at this stage. Maybe Anthony LaPaglia.

Might get some B-grade starlet to date one of them. Just for a bit of publicity.

Do you reckon Kate Fischer would bang a Leb?

What I am stuck on is whether my Leb Boys would be welcomed by Sydney’s A listers.

Do you reckon The Sydney Magazine would have them on the front cover?

What about that adman Jack Singleton? Do you think he might get them for a promo for one of this stupid beers?

And do you reckon my documentary would be met with silence from Alan Jones, Morris Dilemma and John Howard?

I mean who the heck are these Bra Boys anyway?

One of them was charged with murder, another with accessory. They were known to beat up on the cops.

One clown is even some world champion surfer and yet after all his international wins, he still remains in debt.

This fool has even got himself a new clothing line. Part of the branding includes a mug shot of him taken by Police.

Please! Aren’t they criminals?

If they were Lebs, I suspect the story would be different.

Alan Jones would be on the blower daily, screaming to his listeners about middle eastern crims benefiting from crime.

We’d have Morris Dilemma offering a zero tolerance policy that would prevent any Leb from venturing within 5 miles of a cop. And of course you would have John Howard. Nothing needs to be said.

Apparently these Bra Boys, did it tough. They grew up in a Housing Commission flat with a single parent – who was never around. Yawn.

Well I grew up in Housing Commission and I came from a single parent family.

I didn’t beat up cops though. Instead I became a finance journalist.

Marrickville Mauling

A friend of mine just emailed me this - Poor Fred, somehow I suspect the Christian Democratic Party won't have much traction in Marrickville. Amen to that!

Taking Bennelong

Forget about these kids. Let’s just get rid of the Desiccated Coconut

Yep it’s the beginning of March and the NSW State election is only four weeks away. Yawn. Is it going to be Labor’s Carmel or the Green’s Fi? Who knows? Who cares? The trains still won’t run on time.

It certainly won’t be the Liberal’s Mansour. If there is one thing that is guaranteed in Marrickville, it is this. The Libs may get in but it will be during the second coming of Christ.

Unlike Bennelong of course.

But what’s exciting now, is the possibility of former ABC journo Maxine McKew taking on Howard in his seat.

With a four per cent swing needed to get rid of Coward which, Keating described recently as a desiccated coconut, it could still be a tall ask in this climate of fear and loathing.

But we can live in hope.

A dear work colleague of mine (a lovely lady from nearby Kingdom of Leichhardt) raised an interesting idea.

“Wouldn’t it be good if the inner west could vote in Bennelong,” she said in an email (which incidentally went via the company’s Chicago office but that’s another story).

It got me thinking.

The Glebe vox populi this week was on resident’s views about McKew taking on Howard. Comments included:

I like her so good on her. I’m just hoping Labor will get in so any opposition is good. She has a lovely voice and is obviously very intelligent.

“It’s a good think someone with a high profile is challenging the Prime Minister. I’d like to see him gone.”

What if we transport these beliefs in Bennelong by getting some short-term leases in East Ryde, Epping or Denistone?

With the rental crisis happening at the moment, surely we can easily find tenants for our Marrickville homes?

Is this too much of a fanciful notion? Am I just dreaming? Has over ten years of the Coward Government affected my brain?

Help!

Is the Australian cricket team just a bunch of dickeads?

Are these blokes just a bunch of arseholes? This was a theme picked up at a recent inner west dinner party with my fellow Princess Sam

Princess Sam says....

“They might be arseholes but they’re our arseholes.”

I found myself uttering these very words quite recently, in defence of the indefensible: the Australian cricket team.

I was at a BBQ at a friend of a friend’s gorgeous Art Deco flat in Ewart Street. There were four of us: the host and her equally lovely friend, who were both from New Zealand, had agreed to break bread with two Aussies - Our Marrickville Princess and yours truly.

The cricket was on somewhere in the background – Australia playing New Zealand in a one-dayer - and, considering our salon bridged both sides of the Tasman, we took more than a passing interest.

Now, I do realise that the Australian cricket team is utterly indefensible. They wear canary yellow tracksuits. They call themselves Warnie, Watto, Symmo and Punter. They text too much and sledge even more.

And worse – on this Sunday, they were playing New Zealand. New Zealand, who serve their dish of Daniel Vettori on a bed of sleek black trakkies (apparently brown was the new black only up until the late 1990s…) with lovely wire-rimmed specs on top. Who play…but really, who cares? Let’s just stick with Vettori.

Yet, when I noticed that the Princess was supporting New Zealand on this occasion, I had to say my piece. I had recently returned from a two and a bit year sojourn to the UK where I had to learn to love ‘our boys’ after they lost the Ashes to the locals in 2005. I had figured out how to focus on Gilchrist and his sportsmanship, on the fact that ‘Bing’ Lee had managed to grow up (except for his nickname…and that band, obviously…oh, never mind!) and to pretend to accept the fact that ‘Punter’ was obviously deeply misunderstood by the clientele of Bourbon & Beefsteak who thought him a petulant little man, and that he did not even vaguely resemble George W. Bush.

Our Princess was, however, not buying my rhetoric: “I love the cricket and I know I’m Aussie, but they’re arseholes,” she remonstrated.
And this is where I puffed up my chest, sucked in my breath and uttered in sage-like earnestness: “They might be arseholes but they’re our arseholes.”

Now, it would be prudent to point out that this was no charcoal snag and warm tinny evening. There were three types of cheese (like Michelin stars, I think the more cheeses there are on the table, the posher the do – but I was born in Blacktown so I’d take that cheese with more than a few grains of salt, Kraft Cheddar Cheese-style) so, clearly, the evening was civilised.

And I was not.

But surely it’s OK to indulge in that atavistic urge to love the devil you know? To pin your colours to canary yellow tracksuits and thump your chest with teary pride when Symmo hits the winning runs and screams in the face of his opponent rather than shake hands gracefully?

Nonetheless, I remain troubled by it all.