Tuesday 30 June 2015

What were they thinking? #1


Just what did those in charge of the Theatre Royal in Sydney have in mind when they agreed to stage Legends, starring Hayley and Juliet Mills trying to show that age has not wearied them?

Get over it ladies, it has. That you would even dream of performing such a dreary, cliché-ridden script shows that time catches up with all of us.  

It must have been hard looking out into the vast emptiness of the theatre. It seats 1183 people. A thousand or so found better things to do on a Saturday night. We didn’t. We had a good night. But this two hours of tedium played little part.   

Sunday 7 June 2015

Where has all the outrage gone?

Earlier this year I posted on the unmitigated evil that is the death penalty. It was a hot topic as the Australian Government hollered across the Timor Sea, to no avail. Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were shot on 29 April. They were among the 160 executed that month by governments worldwide.


To its credit the Australian Government showed signs then of campaigning against the death penalty. Not much seems to have happened since. Why don't we start with the US? There, about 20 people are scheduled for execution between now and May 2018. Let's make clear to our straight-talking ally that the issue is one of principle. Nationality is irrelevant.