TV Travel Ads c1990s

This illo accompanied a TravelWeek story about the usefulness of advertising travel on TV during the 1990s

A beaut representative?

Senator Ricky Muir has WOWed! a lot of people with his belated 'maiden' speech to the Senate. Billed as some kind of weird petrol head in the aftermath of the last federal election, senator Muir has kept a pretty low profile since entering the parliament. Quite rightly it seems, because he now seems to be the epitome of an ordinary 'good bloke' who has found himself in a situation alien to any he has previously experienced in his adult life. There isn't much like parliamentary protocols to worry about when you're busy earning a quid as a country worker doing the best you can for a reasonably large dependent family.

Ricky has used his early days as a people's representative learning the ropes in his new work environment... not performing old tricks like many of his senate colleagues dancing to the tune played by party strategists. I personally LIKE what he had to say about his reasons for taking the extraordinary step of standing for parliament. Early days, but Ricky now sounds to me like a 'dinkum' Aussie bloke out to do the best he can for his family and the constituents whom he represents... and, is definitely NOT a party hack like many of the crowd currently occupying  seats in the federal parliament.

More power to his arm... and let's hope his example attracts other decent ordinary Australians to participate in the political process without being slaves to one doctrine or another.

Grey Army?

Work for all us oldies... or just another of 'smokin' Joe's ruminations?

Look back to this day in 2012

Instead of easing myself into what comes after 80... I spent most of today running around like the proverbial fly of a cobalt hue catching up on grocery shopping and attending to other annoyances like car rego fees and replacing sunglasses accidentally trodden on last Monday.

No time to get near a computer until after dinner, so today's blog entry is a 'filler' using my drawing of 4/3/2012 in a fore-runner to this blog. At the time, the stoush between Abbott and Gillard was in full swing so I did a 'punch 'n' judy' mock-up in the style of one of my all-time animation heroes... Emmanuel LUZZATI.

The way ahead.

Eighty years of age today. Getting to the green fields of the high ground was an exhausting climb...
only to find nothing but clichés!

Ah well... I guess that's life?

We have lift off...

... for share holders (briefly) anyway. But, credit where credit is due. The alignment of cost reduction programs and the bottom falling out of oil prices seems to be working for Mr. Joyce at the moment.

Sentimentally, I hope the turn-around for Qantas continues apace.

Canned laughter?

Contracting some exotic disease from inadequately labeled imported fresh and/or 'processed' food is no joke. But, our labeling laws ARE a joke... and it's difficult to make fun of delinquency like that.

Actually, this cartoon is largely a re-cycled object. Food labeling is not a new subject. This drawing was first posted on May 28th 2012 in a forerunner of this blog. Only the speech balloons have been changed to reflect a slightly different aspect of the problem.

More time for possible home maintenance/clean-up  requirements after a particularly fierce wind and thunder storm swept across Melbourne last night.