ALIAS POOR YORICK

Let me make one thing perfectly clear - I did not want to make this concession speech. I did not wish to concede this election. You may have noticed that it has been some nine days since polls closed and that I am only now standing on this stage because my staff and other concerned party members are behind me goading me with pointed sticks and pitchforks in a decidedly non-ironic fashion. They tell me that the numbers are against me, that I do not have enough votes to govern and I say that numbers can be  treacherous lying little scum pig bastard things of no real value in determining a proper and useful result. However I am forced to accept that I may be in the minority on this point. Before I move on to grudging congratulations and the all-important business of finding people to blame let me just say that although we may not have received as many votes as we had hoped, these votes were of an indisputably higher value than the votes cast against us, and were cas...

Top Ten Really Really First World Problems 1.  You run out of Greek feta for your spinach and feta omelette and have to use Bulgarian feta instead 2. You pay $10,000 more than you should for a new Fiat 500 3. You and your partner have a really intense argument about whether the correct wine to have with Blue Castillo is a zinfandel or a pinot-Gris. This argument becomes so intense one of you writes an email to zany Age wine writer Mark Shields only to discover he has been dead for fifteen years. This leads inexplicably to fresh arguments and bitter recriminations over an affair one of you had with a sommelier back in the late-nineties. And then things get completely out of control when you argue about whether you can even have wine, let alone cheese, on your newly-adopted paleo diet.  In the bitterly contested divorce settlement your partner gets custody of the fake Brett Whitely. 4. Your friends laugh at the way you don't seem totally comfortable...

Call me Macgregor. Mmm, that sounds good. Kind of punchy. I might just carry on and write a book. Find me a bloody enormous fish immediately. But no, seriously, I am diverted from my true purpose. I am here to claim my Scottish heritage. To embrace my inner Scot. Yes my friends (except the f***ing English) I really am he who is called MacGregor. Why am I talking like this ? I have no idea . Perhaps it's the poetry innate in the soul of every true Celt, perhaps it is that this heart of mine truly belongs in the Higlands, perhaps it is this whisky. But friends (except the f***ing English) I may not look like the stuff of the Higlands. Or even the Highlands. But I am Scottish where it counts, on the inside. Yes, my heart is wearing a kilt, and there's a dirk stuck somewhere in my esophagus, which may account for that stabbing pain I occasionally experience. And 'tis now I must share my song with you. I wrote this song while suffering from exposure high high in th...

It was a day like any other day, except it was dark, so it may have been night. You notice things like that in my game. You have to. I was in my office. I had no idea what was going on. I work best like that. I lit a cigarette and poured a large scotch - it's important to have a proper breakfast. It'd been a long dull week punctuated only by bursts of extreme boredom and I felt like slapping someone. There was no-one around so I slapped myself. And I liked it. Just then a woman stumbled into the office, which was something of a relief because I was sick of slapping myself. And four word sentences. Besides, this story was going nowhere and I'd been there before. This dame was quite something. She had long blonde legs that went all the way to the ground and straight back up again with only a brief pause for an espresso and a cigarette. She was beautiful in a dangerous way, dangerous in a beautiful way,  and had eyes that said she was capable of microwaving your...

Stand back in shock and awe other political parties, the Ferret Party is here and we mean to win this election. We are the party that is determined to look the future full in the face  with nary a sideways glance behind us as we move forward. Shoulder to shoulder with you the people. And we will win this thing for the simple reason that we cannot lose. Our leader, Lord Clive Ferret, is worth ten billion dollars, which makes him a billion times smarter than any of you. Unless of course you are worth ten million dollars, in which case he is a thousand times smarter than you. If you are worth just under a million dollars, then ... oh look, he's just heaps smarter than any of you, so shut up. So why, you ask, go on then, ask away, why oh why will the Ferret Party be the best rulers ever ever in the history of Australia so far ?  Because : 1. No Ferret Prime Minister has ever led this country into war 2. We promise that ballroom dancing will be int...

    I have struggled over the years with the single origin espresso on offer at Expresso Espresso. There has been strength without comprehension, power without passion, and sometimes that most exquisite but fatal flaw in a single origin coffee - beauty without restraint. This has all changed. A new bean, an exciting new beginning. They would only tell me it comes from a bush, somewhere in the foothills of Senegal, which was once urinated on by a white rhino. It is not for me to speculate about spiritual significance of this animal, but there is magic afoot. There is at first sip a reluctance to engage. It is as if the coffee were saying "come here, no go away". And then the dance begins. There is Berlioz, there is Bartok, there is even a hint of Wagner at his more lyrical and lilting. There is that life-affirming splash of ozone as the lightening storm approaches. There is cinnamon and chocolate and tobacco and Armagnac all tied up in a der...

You look great. Have you lost weight ? You're doing something new with your hair, aren't you ? And those shoes are fabulous. Really. You look terrific. Now you'll find as the election approaches that the other parties will get bogged down in policies and promises. We won't be making that mistake. We know what you want, and it's our job to explain to you just how much we'd like to be able to give you those things, if only that were possible. We'll be running a beautifully nuanced campaign, slim, sleek, and oddly reminiscent of those late sixties Peter Stuyvesant Passport to International Smoking Pleasure advertisements that we all remember from the movies. I mean pictures. Strewth cor blimey mate, we are after all real Australians. Like you. And like you, we are deeply concerned about the economy.  Is it working ? Have we got the right sort of economy ? Do we even need an economy at all ? Possibly not, according to Treasury, but they've had me w...