An Australia Day contemplation on becoming an Australian

January 24, 2013April 14, 2013freshlyworded 4 Comments

A week ago, I rang up the Department of Immigration to enquire about a passport matter.

Whilst on the phone, I asked the woman on the end of the line if she could tell me when I would be eligible for Australian citizenship.

To my surprise, she told me it was mid-March…this year.

I’d expected to be told it would be a couple of years off.

Despite having lived here for over 8 years (and qualified enough in my eyes as my tax returns can attest) I know all too well that there are convoluted rules about how long you must be in the country on certain visas before you can, in the words of Peter Allen (or Qantas), “call Australia home”.

Forests in Tasmania have been decimated to supply the paperwork to complete previous visa applications: two for a work permits and one for my spouse visa.

But that of course is the Australian way.

Finding out about my upcoming dual citizenship opportunity has got me thinking a bit more about what it will mean to be an Australian, provided the spooks (ASIO) don’t deem me a security risk, and send me to the Ecuadorian embassy in London to join Julian Assange, or worse, Pretoria.

Should I pledge my allegiance to Dick Smith and only buy Australian-made products, even if they cost more?

Do I now support the Wallabies, the Kangaroos, the Baggy Greens, the Socceroos, the Olyroos, the Hockeyroos, the Boomers, the Diamonds, the Matildas, the Opals and the Koalas?

Do I have to shout for Lleyton Hewitt? Do I? Do I?

And must I call the mayor the “mare”?

So much to ponder!

Finding out about becoming an oke ‘Stralian has also coincided with the run up to Australia Day tomorrow (January 26) with the nation getting the day off on Monday.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Australia Day.

My mind always seems to conjure up images of drunken yobbos, Australian flags draped over their shoulders like capes, stomping on cars and hurling abuse at anyone not white enough, as happened in Manly a couple of years back.

And I also tend to think of that famous Australian “pride” t-shirt. You know the one that says:

“This Is Australia – We eat meat, we drink beer and we speak f#ckin english!”

Losely translated it means:

“Unless you’re white, kindly f*ck off”

Strangely enough, this Howard-era slogan has not quite disappeared under the slightly left-leaning Labor government.

Instead, it’s morphed into:

“This is Australia: We eat meat, we speak English, but if you have $5 million, we couldn’t give a f*ck”

Not quite as catchy I admit, but true.

The ‘$5 million, no English’ required refers to the new ‘Golden ticket’ visa – or the more official sounding Significant Investor Visa – the government is giving out to anyone who can stump up a wad of cash, no matter if they speak Martian.

At the same time, they’re deporting refugees who arrive by boat to remote island hell-holes or forcing them into poverty on the mainland, by not allowing them to work.

Which of course brings me to the issue of who I am going to vote for, since voting is compulsory (a strange phenomenon I have yet to get my head around) and there is an election coming up towards the end of the year.

I was never a fan John Howard and Mr Speedo (Tony Abbott), Shrek (Joe Hockey) and Condeleeza Rice’s cousin-from-another-mother (Julie Bishop) hardly seem much better.

Perhaps if Malcolm Turnbull took charge I’d consider it. Or maybe I’ll have consider the Greens. I’ll have to do some reading.

On that note, I’ve been reading up about what Australia Day really is all about.

Officially, it serves to commemorate the arrival of the first British fleet of convict ships in 1788 and the laying of the foundations for modern day Australia.

But it seems to mean different things to different people, or nothing at all.

The white bogans in the far outer burbs, rusty cars parked on unkept lawns, pit-bulls at the ready, use the occasion to lament the days when Australian culture was whiter the washing washed in OMO.

The aborigines call it invasion day, and who can blame them.

The government talks about celebrating everything that’s great about Australia, but usually just end up in fisticuffs with the opposition, or as happened last year, with the prime minister being unceremoniously dragged off by her security personnel after Tony Abbott had fanned the flames of aboriginal anger.

As for new citizens-to-be like me?

We’re still trying to figure out the bloody rules to Australian football, ponder why football is called soccer and rugby football, and why that red-faced balding geezer who once coached the Wallabies is still on the radio.

Perhaps on Australia Day this year, I’ll just take inspiration from that marvellous Paul Hogan ad from the 1980s – you know the one where he talks about:

“The land of wonder, the land down under“.

And throw a couple of shrimps on the barbie.

The junkie in literature: a review of ‘Trainspotting’ by Irvine Welsh

January 21, 2013January 22, 2013freshlyworded 8 Comments

‘Trainspotting’ by Irvine Welsh is the fourth in a series of a books I am reading and reviewing based on the theme “The junkie in literature” with the aim to learn more about this sub-culture.

I’ve so far read and reviewed ‘Monkey Grip’ by Helen Garner, ‘Junky’ by William S. Burroughs and ‘Confessions of an English Opium Eater’ by Thomas De Quincey.

When I think of Trainspotting, my mind immediately conjures up scenes from the movie of the novel: Mark “Rent Boy’ Renton emerging from the bowl of the filthiest toilet in Scotland, the dead baby crawling on the ceiling, Begbie throwing his glass of beer over his head in a crowded pub and the lines:

“Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machine; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth.”

The film was fantastic and horrible.

The book is much, much better.

A brilliant, excruciating, haunting and often hilarious story about a group of Scottish junkies (and one pyschotic lunatic – Francis Begbie) set in the impoverished council estates of Edinburgh circa the late 1980s, early 1990s.

Mark Renton is the axis of the novel, an intelligent, ocassionaly cruel, somewhat bitter and philosophical junky, who in between trying to quit heroin, muses about the meaning of his life, what it means to be Scottish (colonised by English ‘wankers’ is how he puts it), trying to understand women and the pleasures and pain of being a junkie.

Many of the chapters are narrated through his eyes, but also through the eyes of sweet, hopeless romantic ‘Spud’, the psychotic fury of Frank Begbie and a number of other characters that form part of the scene.

In this way, the reader gets a 360 degree view of the world of the junky: binge drinking, shooting up in squalid apartments, random sex, attempts at a normal life.

The first thing that will strike anyway who reads the book is that its written phonetically, in Scottish dialect, meaning as a reader you have to adjust to the language and at times decipher the meaning of words.

Here’s Renton describing injecting himself:

…Ah start tae cook up another shot. As ah shakily haud the spoon over the candle, waitin for the junk tae dissolve, ah think; more short-term sea, more long-term poison. This thought though is naewhere near sufficient tae stop us fae what ah huv tae dae.”

Strangely, this does not distract from the story telling or plot, but really centres you in the time and place and experiences of the characters in the book.

It gives parts of the book a poetic quality as Welsh managed to convey the gruff musicality of the working class Scottish accent.

For this is a distinctly Scottish tale about heroin addiction, friendship, betrayal, love, radges (crazy people), gadges (schemers) and futbal (football).

It’s about people caught up at the bottom end of the Scottish welfare state with little hope or ambition to get out.

Intelligent and worldly, Renton shares the common trait of many junkies.

Like the writer/drifter William S. Burroughs in ‘Junky, artist Javo in ‘Monkey Grip’ and perceptive, strong-headed and proud Thomas De Quincey in ‘Confessions of an English Opium Eater’, Renton searches for something to take life beyond the mundane, to rise above crowd, or just to escape the mind-numbing boredom of existence, of everyday life.

Though being a junky is heaven and hell for Renton, Spud and Sick Boy, it is preferable to the familiar storyline of getting married, getting a mortgage, buying a bigger television, a car and watching “mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows.

Describing the heroin ‘hit’, Renton says: “Take yir best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you’re still fuckin miles off the pace.”

On the effects of heroin: “Julie looked really good when she started oan smack. Maist lassies dae. It seems tae bring oot the best in them. It always seem to gie, before it takes back, wi interest.”

On the appeal of heroin.: “Ma problem is, whenever ah sense the possibility, or realise the actuality ay attaining something that ah thought ah wanted…it just seems so dull n sterlie. Junk’s different though. Ye cannae turn yir back oan it sae easy. It willnae let ye. Trying tae manage a junk problem is the ultimate challenge It’s also a fuckin good kick.”

Trainspotting is a harsh book, unpleasant and horrfying as it is hilarious and insightful, but you get an incredible kick out of reading it, because you become part of the scene.

Required reading I say!

freshlyworded list of the week: 11 meetings with famous people including Spike Lee, Johnny Vegas and Gary Player

January 19, 2013February 17, 2026freshlyworded Leave a comment

The impression you form of a celebrity, someone you see regularly on television or in the newspapers, is often very different to the ‘real person’ when you meet them in the flesh.

Sometimes it can be an exhilarating experience, other times a disappointment. Often they’re just an ass!

Over the years, I’ve bumped into a number of people with varying degrees of fame, some just for a brief minute and others I’ve had the pleasure of engaging in conversation.

These are the ones that spring most readily in mind:

1. Gary Player

I met golfer Gary Player at a charity event at his estate just outside of Johannesburg in the late 1990s. Winner of nine majors and over a 100 tournaments in his career, it was a pleasure talking to this legendary sportsman surrounded by his glass cabinets filled to bursting with his golfing trophies. We talked about the future of South Africa and what the young people needed to do to make the country work. I recall him being very optimistic about the future, very easy to talk to and a real gentlemen. This is of course the guy who said: “The harder I practice, the luckier I get.”

2. Spike Lee

I very briefly met film director Spike Lee, outside the Union Buildings, Pretoria, about 1999. He had just been part of a press conference with then South African president Thabo Mbeki to promote a television commercial he was shooting for one or other charity. He was getting into a car and I said to him: “Spike I am a great fan of your movies.” He turned around and said: “Oh yeah, which ones?” I told him “Do the right thing,” was my favourite.

3. Gary Bailey

I met Gary Bailey, who was goal-keeper for Manchester United in nearly 300 hundred games, at a sports press conference in Johannesburg and remember he was very much like his on-camera persona (he hosts the Premier League show on Supersport in South Africa) – warm, friendly and sincere.

4.Michael Madsen

Michael Madsen played ‘Mr White’, the psychopathic criminal in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Reservoir Dogs’, a film I idolised. He came to London while I was writing for an accountancy magazine (AccountancyAge.com) to attend a press conference to launch a film he was producing and to star in called “Red Light Runners’ (which I don’t think was ever made). It was being funded by some new tax ruling, which was why I was there. Entirely, inappropriately, after the press conference, I asked Madsen to sign my press pack, which he did. He looked a lot older and dishevelled compared to the cool character he played on-screen – dancing around his victim to “Stuck in the middle with you” with a switch-blade. Still it was a bit of a thrill to meet him briefly. Needless to say, I lost the press pack with Madsen’s autograph.

5.Jonny Vegas

I met Johnny Vegas (you may have seen him in Black Books, episodes of QI or doing his stand-up routine) also while working on the Accountancy magazine. We attended an awards night in Newcastle on a bitterly cold night, though it didn’t stop the local girls from wearing virtually nothing I recall. Johnny was the entertainment at St James Park (home of Newcastle United football team). He arrived on stage with a tray of Guinness pints, proceeded to get pissed, and then after the show we all joined him for drinks at a nearby pub. He has a really magnetic character, very charming and you should have seen the number of beautiful women hanging off every word of this rotund, jovial man. I got chatting to him about rugby – he is a rugby league fan (coming from the north of England) but we got to chatting about rugby union and I remember him telling me how much he enjoyed the game and was a big fan of the Springboks.

6. Bruce Grobbelaar

Anyone who is a Liverpool fan will know who Bruce Grobbelaar is . He played for the club in the 1980s and 1990s and was capable of being an unbelievable goalkeeper on his day, but also able to make the silliest mistakes. His career was tainted by match-fixing claims. I met him at an FA Cup event in a pub in Johannesburg. He was signing autographs on the back of beer coasters. He didn’t seem particularly pleased to be there and can’t say I left with a good impression of the man.

7.Dara O’Briain

Dara O’ Briain is probably most recognisable as a frequent guest on Stephen Fry’s QI show on the ABC. I met him when he was less well-known, but hosting our annual Accountancy Age awards in London. Being Irish, he was very friendly, talked a lot, said “ehm” instead of “um” and was also charming and funny.

8. Baby Jake Matlala

Jacob ‘Baby Jake’ Matlala is a legend in South African boxing. He measures all of 4 foot 10 inches, but was an incredibly tough opponent in the ring as a flyweight fighter and ended up with 53 victories from 68 fights and won four world titles. I found him to be very lively, enthusiastic and sweet in person. Like his jabs and punches, he talked at a rapid rate.

9. Peter FitzSimons

I met Peter FitzSimons very briefly backstage at the Australian Mortgage Awards. FitzSimons was the host and I was presenting one of the awards. He asked me, as we waited for the winner to come on stage, how the magazine was coming along (I was the editor then of a mortgage broking mag called Australian Broker), though I doubt he’d ever read it. But it was a nice thing to say. FitzSimons is a successful Australian non-fiction writer (mainly in relation to wars and battles), a journalist and columnist and played seven test matches at lock for the Wallabies.

10. Iain Banks

Iain Banks (or Iain M. Banks if you like science fiction-writing) is a best-selling writer, most famous for his novel “The Wasp Factory” a very, very dark, nasty bit of fiction, considered one of the best novels of the 20th century. I met him at a book signing at Exclusive Books in Hyde Park, Johannesburg. I brought an older, paperback copy of The Wasp Factory. He remarked that he didn’t often see this version of his book. Needless to say, I think I lost that autographed book as well.

11. Andie MacDowell

I am kind of fibbing on this one. I never actually met her, perhaps “stalking” would be more accurate. I was kind of obsessed with Andie MacDowell, the model turned Hollywood actress, when I found myself in the Tate Modern Art gallery in London one afternoon, and there she was looking at paintings all on her own. I had a picture of her in my bedroom and loved her in Green Card, Groundhog Day and Short Cuts, perhaps it was her Southern accent that really appealed to me. Anyway, I ended up following her, from a discreet distance as she walked from room to room at the Tate Modern. Only for a few rooms mind you. If I wasn’t so star struck, I might actually have ventured a conversation. “What does this piece say to you Andie?” is perhaps the question I was pondering in my head.

Snake-infested Australia: my own encounters with slithering creatures

January 17, 2013freshlyworded Leave a comment

Anyone reading news about Australia lately might be forgiven for thinking the country is overrun with snakes, that we are fighting them off on our way onto trains and planes, in hospitals and in our homes.

The stereotypical view of Australia as a dangerous place full of things that sting, bite and maim has been given an added twist recently with some truly bizarre snake-encounters that have made the news.

There was the story about an inquisitive three-year-old boy from North Queensland who found a nest of nine eggs in his backyard, put them in a plastic takeaway container in his cupboard, only for them to hatch as deadly brown snakes – poisonous from birth.

There’s this tale about a Tiger snake found in a hospital bed in Melbourne and most recently, this rather sad story about a scrub python – the largest snake in Australia – which was filmed at thousands of feet above sea-level in a life and death struggle on the wing of a Qantas aeroplane flying from Cairns to Port Moresby.

All these incidents have given me cause to reflect on my own encounters with snakes in Australia, of which I have had a few.

First, I should begin by saying that unless you live in the country or tropical Queensland (which is rather snake-infested), the chances of encountering a snake in the city or even the suburbs is pretty rare.

On a rainy night in the Valley…

That being said, I first crossed paths with what I believed to be a very large python one rainy night.

I was walking home from Fortitude Valley, the entertainment quarter of Brisbane down Brunswick Road, a steeply dipping road lined with shops, houses and apartments and it was pouring with rain.

Now on occasion, after one or two beers too many, I had mistakenly identified, late at night, fallen branches as would-be serpents, only to discover that they were nothing more dangerous than something to trip over.

However, on this night in question, as I walked through a section of shops and cafes – all closed and quiet, an enormous snake slithered a few metres in front of me, across the pavement and under a house converted into a shop – most houses in Brisbane are raised above the ground (they’re called Queenslanders) so they make a nice spot for a snake to find warmth and shelter.

Well I got quite a shock upon realising it really was a very big, very real, very live snake and that if I’d been a bit more drunk and a just a little bit more careless I could well have stood on it!

A snake in the eaves…

The two other encounters with snakes that are worth mentioning both occurred on a farm we were living on in the outskirts of Sydney near Hornsby on the North Shore.

It was a big old house with acres of land where my sister-in-law had horses and there were rabbits and colourful birds.

We spent most of our time in an enormous front room with floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the fields and the horses – it was quite an idyllic place really.

One morning, as we got up to go out for breakfast – it must have been the weekend – I closed the front door of our front room and noticed something green and glistening just underneath the roof.

This is what I saw:

Looking down at us, its head resting just over a wooden ledge, we all got the shock of our lives.

I remember we called the wildlife number, who told us to ignore it after I described the appearance of the snake on the phone and then I rushed out and bought a book of Australian snakes to identify the specifies.

It turned out to be a diamond-backed python, and it became a regular visitor on the farm. I would often see it winding its way through the vine leaves in front of the double doors of the front room.

On one occasion, the snake did so while we had a guest staying over who swore she would drive all the way back to Sydney (about an hour away) if she saw the dreaded snake.

Her back was facing the window and she had absolutely no idea the snake was only a metre or so behind her – though behind the doors.

I actually grew to really like the snake, it had beautiful markings and never ever bothered us, content with its position up in the roof (though later I learned, after we moved out, that it crawled into the house and over the sofa one night).

Snake in the car…

My last snake tale is a bit sad.

I had parked my car on the grass to clean it and then later driven to the supermarket to pick up groceries. I was driving a Toyota at the time, and not once in many years of owning had it not started.

Groceries in the boot of the car, the dogs in the backseat, I stuck the key in the ignition and turned it over.

The car spluttered but refused to start. I tried again. Something was not right.

Then a guy shouted out across the car park; something you’d only ever here in Australia:

“Mate, there’s a snake coming out of your car.”

I flung open the car, the dog ran off, and I saw a badly burned and mangled snake emerging from the bonnet.

It was pretty horrible. I got into a bit of a panic.

As the snake writhed in agony, people shouted at me to drive over it.

I grabbed the dog, threw him into the back of the car and drove off at high speed, wondering what sort of parallel universe I had just entered and hopefully left behind.

It was a weird f@cking day!

So those are my three major snake tales, though not my only encounters with these curious creatures.

I’ve encountered a python on a nature walk, a little green snake on the beach and recently saw an enormous snake on the side of the road as we drove from Sydney north to Taree over Christmas.

Funnily enough, while my friends in the UK warned me about getting bitten by snakes and spiders “on the arse” when I moved to Australia, the only thing that ever attacked me was a bird.

A ferocious magpie dive-bombed me once when I was living in Coogee, near the beach.

No one had thought to warn me about a little black and white bird that turns feral around Spring time.

freshlyworded list of the week: the 10 Woody Allen films you must see before you die

January 11, 2013January 19, 2013freshlyworded Leave a comment

Woody Allen, born in the Bronx as Allen Stewart Koningsberg in 1935, has been making movies since 1965, having starting out as a sketch writer and stand-up comedian.

In total he has written and directed (and in many cases starred in) 46 films starting with ‘What’s Up Tiger Lily?‘ and is currently in post-production on a film called “Blue Jasmine” starring Cate Blanchette and Alec Baldwin.

I admire him immensely: starting from his early stand-up comedy records (watch his famous and hilarious “I shot a Moose” sketch from 1965″) to his early relationship comedies to later more dramatic works.

Manhattan has been the canvas for his stories, but he’s also made London, Paris and Barcelona backdrops for his films.

Not all have been classics, some have been mediocre and forgettable and others have been plain awful.

Why do I admire him so much: it’s the stories he tells about love, relationships, anxiety, existentialism, religion all brought together with classic Woody Allen wit and insight.

It’s also his iconic angst-ridden, questioning, self-doubting and fallible jewish male character, portrayed so often in his films that I love so much.

These are 10 of his films that I have loved (I’ve not seen all of his films) and recommend highly:

Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989) is Woody Allen’s greatest cinematic achievement. It brings together all of his key themes – religion, morality, family, guilt, the meaning and purpose of life – in a seemless way with great writing, a pitch-perfect soundtrack and wonderful performances by its ensemble cast. There are numerous plots and sub-plots, but the film principally revolves around Judah Rosenthal (a brilliant Martin Landau), a successful and wealthy ophthalmologist, who resorts to desperate measures to end an affair with Dolores Paley (equally brilliant Angelica Huston). Despite the heavy material, it is also extremely funny with the humour provided by Allen himself an idealistic documentary film-maker Clifford Stern, given the opportunity to make a documentary about his brother-in-law Lester (Alan Alda), an obnoxious big-time television producer. He does it so that he can earn enough money to make a documentary about a life-affirming jewish professor, Louis Levy, all the while falling in love with Lester’s associate producer Halley Reed (Mia Farrow).

Annie Hall (1977) would be top of many people’s lists of favourite Woody Allen films. At its heart it’s a love story between the angst-ridden, neurotic Alvy Singer (Allen) and quirky, lovable, absent-minded Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) with some of his best lines and jokes thrown in and questions about God and the meaning of life. There’s also some great cameos from Paul Simon, Christopher Walken and Sigourney Weaver.

One memorable line comes after Annie Hall parks her VW beetle almost perpendicular to the curb following an exhibtion of some of the worst driving ever seen on film.

Alvy remarks: Don’t worry. We can walk to the curb from here.

Shot beautifully in black and white, Manhattan (1979) is Woody Allen’s visual homage to the city that he loves. The city is the backdrop to Isaac’s (Allen) affair with 17-year-old Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), while pursuing the mistress of his best friend, Yale. There are so many iconic shots of Manhattan to drool over and great lines like:

Yale: You are so self-righteous, you know. I mean we’re just people. We’re just human beings, you know? You think you’re God.

Isaac Davis: I… I gotta model myself after someone.

Matchpoint (2005) sees Woody Allen move locations to London with this dark tale about seduction and murder starring Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

play it again sam

Play it Again Sam (1972) is actually directly by Herbert Ross, but based on Woody Allen’s stage play and stars him in the lead role of a love-sick film critic and schmuck who turns to his alter ego – Humphrey Bogart in his role as smooth talking Rick Blaine from Casablanca – for inspiration as to how to be a lady’s man.

Love and Death (1975) is a historical comedy set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. Woody Allen plays neurotic soldier Boris, in love with his Sonja (Diane Keaton) who gets involved in a plot to assassinate Napoleon, with philosophical musing and some very silly (but hilarious) skits thrown in.

In Midnight in Paris (2011), Owen Wilson plays Gil, an American would-be writer in Paris with his pretentious fiancée who finds himself transported back to the Paris of the 1920s where he meets, drinks and parties with his literary idols including F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and artists like Picasso, Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec.

Zelig (1983) sees Woody Allen play the title role of the chameleon (literally) like Leonard Zelig who can change his appearance to match the people he is with and becomes a global phenomenon. Told in documentary style, it’s hilarious.

In Deconstructing Harry (1997) Woody Allen plays Harry block, a writer suffering from writer’s block, with a penchant for prostitutes and vulgarity. It’s a very funny film as Block recalls events from his past and characters from his books. There’s a memorable scene played by Robin Williams, an actor worried about losing his focus who is shown as actually out of focus in the movie.

Broadway Danny Rose (1984) sees Woody Allen play a talent agent to a string of bizarre performers that no one else will hire. One of them is Lou, a talented lounge singer, making a comeback. Allen goes out of his way to help Lou, but finds himself being pursued by mobsters after trying to bring Lou’s crazy mistress Tina (Mia Farrow) to his concert.

And here’s four to definitely avoid:

The Curse of the Jade Scorpion

Small Time Crooks

Celebrity

Scoop

Time-poor journalists are sitting ducks for press release hoaxes – expect more

January 8, 2013January 8, 2013freshlyworded 3 Comments

The hoax ANZ/Whitehaven Coal press release sent out by environmental activist Jonathan Moylan this week not only exposed the fragile mind-sets of nervous investors, but highlighted the challenges facing time-poor journalists in the internet age of the 24 hour news cycle.

As has been pointed out by many different commentators including Eric Johnstone from The Age, a little research, a little consideration, even a little time spent mulling the press release over, should have alerted journalists and editors that it was fake.

“The press release read like the real thing. However there were several red flags. Banks don’t usually go about advertising the fact they have pulled a financing facility. They leave that to the company,” Johnstone writes.

The fake ANZ press release

Despite these red flags, respected publications like News Limited’s Business Spectator, Fairfax’s metro papers and the Australian Financial Review all bought it hook, line and sinker.

And yet while everyone has been focusing on the impact a press release written in a forest by a 25-year-old translater with basic Photoshop skills and dodgy internet connection had on investors and share prices and possible breaches of the Corporations Act, the bigger story is one about the challenges facing journalists expected to bash out stories in the time it takes to sip a cup of coffee.

Spend time in any online newsroom (as I have done for the past 10 years) and you’ll instantly understand the pressure journalists are under to file copy.

“I need that copy in 10 minutes

“I need it in five minutes.”

“Just file what you have.”

These are the exclamations that ring in the ears of journalists every day uttered by anxious editors.

In the brave new media world, where commercial success is measured by number of ‘hits’, ‘unique browsers’, ‘tweets’ and ‘likes’, there is hardly any time for journalist to sit back and take a moment to think.

The day begins. You turn on computer, put fingers to your keyboard and write, write, write. The day disappears in a flash.

Government reports running to 300 pages must be digested in a few hours, sometimes less, meaning journalists must resort to reading the executive summary and skimming over huge amounts of information.

Intricate legal judgements, deep economic analysis, complex new government policy – its all about finding the story as you skim the paragraphs (keyword searches are especially useful).

And always there is the pressure of time.

Sure there were (and still are) tight deadlines in the past for those journalists working on daily newspapers (I have not worked on one myself) but more than likely – when lucrative print advertising funded newspapers and magazines – they were manageable and editorial teams were large and well resourced.

Today, if journalists want to wear the mantle of true investigative reporters, they must devote their own time, outside of work hours and sometimes their own money to put a deeply researched story together.

And many do.

Jonathan Moylan may have been surprised at the impact his quickly hashed media statement had – wiping $300 million of value off Whitehaven coal and incensing investors and embarrasing editors – but he shouldn’t be.

As an online journalist myself, I have been all to eager on a few occasions to write the story based on research or a press release, which while not a hoax, was based on incorrect information and if I had taken the time to consider the facts before me, would have realised that it clearly was a load of nonsense.

But, a juicy headline as concocted by Moylan, more likely while he rested against a tree and listened to the birds tweeting, would have been impossible to resist for journalists and editors thinking about readers, hits and revenue.

Certainly, at a glance, it looked convincing enough.

(Here’s a copy of the scam press release and you can find numerous genuine ANZ press releases on their website if you want to make your own comparisons.)

Make no mistake, there will be others that will attempt similar guerrilla tactics, considering the enormous impact this hoax has had and the success of other stunts in the past (see this hoax involving Dow Chemicals, this one that caught out Harvey Norman and this recent one targeting MacMahon Holdings ).

Yes, journalists and editors will attempt to be more vigilant, but with the passing of time and the pressure to keep churning out story after story, their guards will slip and we will be easy pickings for activists, trouble-makers and those with more time on their hands than we have.

Book review: The little Welshman who made Sigmund Freud a giant

January 2, 2013January 2, 2013freshlyworded Leave a comment

“Freud’s Wizard” by Brenda Maddox is a biography tracing the life of one Ernest Jones, a Welsh doctor and psychologist who almost single-handedly promoting Sigmund Freud’s ideas of psychoanalysis to Britain and the world.

He also orchestrated the rescuing of Freud, his family and many other prominent Jewish Viennese psychoanalysts when Hitler invaded Austria in 1938. Jones secured the difficult-to-get visas and flew into Nazi-occupied Austria to bring Freud to London.

Maddox’s book could easily have been subtitled: “The man who made Sigmund Freud”.

And given the Jones was a short Welshman and Freud a behemoth of modern psychology, it might have been more elaborately sub-titled: “The little Welshman who made Sigmund Freud a giant”.

Ernest Jones was Freud’s champion and close confidant for 30 years and wrote what is considered the definitive (three-volume) biography of the father of psychoanalysis – ‘The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud’ – considered to be among the greatest biographies ever written.

Maddox, an anglophile American resident in the UK, who has written a number of noted biographies (including those about DH Lawrence, WB Yeats and Rosalind Franklin) has certainly picked an interesting and influential figure to write about in Ernest Jones, one of those figures in history who stand in the shadows of greatness, but were great in their own right.

The book begins with Jones’s birth in a small town a few miles from Swansea in Wales and follows his progress through school, medical school and the start of a very chequered medical career in London and then Toronto, before meeting Freud in 1906 and beginning his life’s work.

I have read some of the reviews of “Freud’s Wizard” which remark that Jones comes across as not a very likeable man – he was controlling, manipulative and devious, someone who tells his own son that he has a “hell of a superego”.

However, these character flaws pale into insignificance compared with disturbing accusations made against Jones alleging indecent behaviour against children while he was a young doctor in London (similar accusations were made later in his career).

Jones was found not guilty, but his innocence – as explained by Maddox – may have more to do with the epoch in which the incident allegedly occurred – that children were considered “mentally unreliable” while there also did not yet exist the technology to test DNA, which may have been conclusive in proving Jones’s guilt or innocence.

Maddox does not overlook this behaviour – she finds it perplexing and disturbing – nor does she overlook Jones’s infidelities or his womanising, but she clearly admires Jones too much to let them get in the way of portraying him as a hero of Freud and of psychoanalysis, which undoubtedly he was.

Taken in 1909: Sigmund Freud front left next to Carl Jung (on his right) with Ernest Jones in the middle of the back row.

The axis of the book is Ernest Jones’s relationship with Freud and his efforts to establish psychoanalysis as a recognised medical treatment rather than a quack, devious treatment with its emphasis on unconscious sexual motives (the Oedipus Complex) and other controversial theories such as penis envy.

The book catalogues the different psychoanalytic societies and journals that Jones founded, his insatiable appetite for writing essays on different psychoanalytic themes (he even wrote a book on figure-skating) and his tireless devotion to the cause of psychoanalysis.

While he fails as a doctor – no London hospital will take him on after his record is blackened – but he ultimately thrives as a psychoanalyst, liasing with all the great psychoanalytic minds (apart from Freud) as well as the famous Bloomsbury Group, a collection of English writers, some of whom helped translate Freud’s ideas into English.

The book also chronicles Jones very important role in keeping the American psychoanalytic movement onside when it threatened to split from the Freudians – Americans believed only medical doctors should be allowed to practice psychoanalysis while British and European psychoanalytic societies believed non-medically trained people could become practitioners provided they were properly trained and underwent psychoanalysis themselves.

The passion of Ernest Jones in this endeavour and others is probably one of the key reasons why so many Americans (especially in places like New York ) undergo psychoanalysis today.

And consider this, without Ernst Jones there might never have been neurotic, anxiety-written comics like Woody Allen and his many jokes and references to psychoanalysis.

As Allen’s character Alvy Singer remarks in “Annie Hall”:

“I was depressed…I would have killed myself but I was in analysis with a strict Freudian and if you kill yourself … they make you pay for the sessions you miss.”

Ernest Jones, who considered himself something of an honorary jew given his close friendship with Freud and other Jewish pyschoanalysts (cemented by his marriage to Kitty Jokl, a jewess) and fond of using yiddish words, would no doubt have found this joke amusing.

Ironically, it was Ernest Jones’s non-Jewishness which helped give Freud’s theories legitimacy in an age when anti-semitism was rife.

Christmas on an Australian farm: a tale about long drops and kangaroos

December 29, 2012January 9, 2013freshlyworded Leave a comment

The farm near Taree, the blue-tinged mountains in the distance

We spent this Christmas on a farm on the mid-north coast of New South Wales, not far from the town of Taree.

It is the farm of my sister-in-law and her husband. It is a beautiful piece of countryside – about 40 hectares – surrounded by lush green meadows and groves of trees with the flat-topped mountains of the Coorabakh National Park a hazy blue in the background.

The farmhouse is not yet finished meaning the toilet and shower facilities are outdoors.

The toilet is a long-drop raised up on a wooden platform enclosed on three sides with a roof on top, affording the user with an unobstructed view of the meadows and blue-tinged hills in the distance.

The cursed long drop

I love the outdoors. The fresh smell in the air, the closeness to nature. Farm animals. Kookaburras and Rozellas in the trees. The general peace and quiet and distance from the mad rush of the city are all pleasing to my constitution.

But taking a crap in a make-shift loo in the great outdoors is not something I particularly enjoy.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a not a prude and I am not one of those people who can only enjoy nature from the vantage point of a five-star lodge (though that would be nice).

But when it comes to sitting on a raised bucket with my pants down, my bowels go into lock down and the best I can manage is a couple of short blasts of the trumpet (if you’ll allow the metaphor).

Then I pull up my pants and exit stage left.

During my stay on the farm, this fruitless exercise was repeated a number of times, with me marching off to the wooden raised toilet, toilet paper roll in hand, only to return to the farmhouse a few minutes later with the same length of toilet paper in hand.

Well after two days of Christmas eating – and in keeping with tradition I over ate – the bare facts of physics dictated that something had to shift.

So I trundled up towards the ‘gallows’, climbed the wooden steps, dropped my pants and took my seat on the throne.

I won’t go into detailed descriptions of facial expressions or sounds, but it was an ultimately successful exercise and as I sat back to enjoy the moment I noticed, off in the distance, two kangaroos facing me at the edge of the meadow.

They appeared to be watching me intently, face on, with their ears perked up and front legs resting on their chests.

I looked at the kangaroos.

They looked back at me.

We watched each other for a moment.

And then off they hopped, showing their distinctive body shapes in profile, their long tails curving upwards as they disappeared beyond the meadow, leaving me, pants still down at my ankles to enjoy the view entirely on my own.

Aah…the serenity.

My eight months without cinema: recollections and reflections of movie-going

December 19, 2012December 31, 2012freshlyworded Leave a comment

So this weekend past I went to the cinema for the first time in eight months.

The last time I went to the movies was on Sunday, April 15. My wife was heavily pregnant at the time and about five days past her due date.

We went to the Nova on Lygon Street in Carlton and saw an exceptionally good French movie called “Le Havre” about an African refugee who is taken in by an old shoe-shine man, who helps him escape across the English channel.

In the cinema my wife started having light labour pains and a couple of days later – in the early hours of a Wednesday morning – Edith (Edie) was born.

She turned eight months old on Tuesday.

Fittingly, I broke my cinematic drought with another movie at the Nova.

I went to see “The Master” starring Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman, set just after the second world war and about a ex-navy man drifter called Freddy Quell (Phoenix) who falls under the spell of the charismatic Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman), an incarnation of Church of Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard. The film, directed by the much revered PT Anderson (Magnolia, Boogie Nights) is intense and interesting, brilliantly acted, but kind of leaves you wondering what the point was in the end. If you liked PT Anderson’s other agonising effort “There Will Be Blood” starring Daniel Day-Lewis as a brutal turn-of-the-century oil prospector, you will love “The Master”.

Still, it was something of an experience undertaking the ritual of going to the movies for the first time in so long.

Coke and popcorn purchased, I wandered into the cinema and found a seat. It was a small cinema – for some reason I had been given one of the double “love seats – and I stretched out, munching on my popcorn and sucking the fizzy ‘solo’ through a straw.

The cinema darkened, and just before the film began, a couple walked in and the guy next to me began tapping away on his iPhone. Clearly he was ignoring the message that had just flashed on the screen: “Please turn off your phone?”

I whispered in his ear: “Can you turn your phone off?”
His reply: “It’s on silent.”

No shit, douche bag!

“Can you turn it off? The screen is bothering me.”
“OK, OK,” he muttered, as he slid the phone into his pocket.

Of course I spent the first 10 minutes of the movie, wondering when next he was going to pull it out again and start tapping away. Thankfully, he never did, though I got the feeling he resented the crunchy sound I made as I munched my way through my jumbo-sized popcorn.

I kept munching anyway.

And half way through the movie, I stopped watching and looked around at all the people staring up, mesmerised by the screen. Have you ever done that? It’s like watching people who have been hypnotised.

Since then, I’ve been reflecting on childhood memories of movie going.

One of my first memories of the cinema, was going to see ‘The Wizard of Oz’. I remember it was somewhere in town (Johannesburg) and must have been the late 1970s – I would have been six or so.

It terrified me. I have memories of the strawman being set on fire (this I’ve checked does happen in the movie) and the tin man being stuck inside a giant sandwich-maker – but maybe I imagined that bit, because I can’t find any reference to it – I’ll have to watch the film again.

My best friend growing up was Jonathan. We were friends since babies and lived on the same street in Germiston – a city about 20 minutes from Johannesburg and site of the world’s biggest gold refinery (and not much else).

The 20th Century Cinema in Germiston

After synagogue on a Saturday, we used to walk into town and like good jewish boys, go to the movies. It was a large imposing building on Main Street, now I believe knocked down, called the 20th Century Cinema, with an art-deco sign and built in 1939. It had an old-fashioned ticket booth at the entrance and an imposing, cavernous lobby. The cinema could hold over 1,400 people (though it was never full when we went) with an upstairs section and a space for an orchestra to play in the pit in front of the screen. There was always a Bugs Bunny cartoon before the film started.

They don’t make cinemas like that anymore – at least not in the Western world.

The art deco Eros in Mumbai

In India we saw a movie in an enormous art-deco cinema called the Eros in Mumbai, where people got up to dance alongside the characters on screen, mobile phones rang, the ticket cost a few dollars and popcorn about 50 cents. Ironically it was a musical about Indians who move to Melbourne and then find themselves being racially abused along with songs and dancing and bad Australian accents.

But back to Germiston and the 20th Century cinema. I recall the great excitement Jonathan and I experienced going to see our first movie on our own.

It was ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’, which came out in 1984 when we would have been 11.

I distinctly remember being terrified at the scenes where the evil sorcerer tears out the heart of his victims amidst the chanting and the lava, and of course the banquet with its monkey brain soup and enormous snake, which is cut open and all the baby snakes slither out.

What I also remember through the haze of time was the Ster Kinekor movie club, where you joined, got a special card and paid only one rand a movie. That would have been about 50 Australian cents in those days.

One rand for a movie. One large silver coin for two hours of escape, excitement and adventure.

My other distinct movie-going memory is heading into town (the centre of Jo’burg) when we were teenagers with Jonathan’s mom and some other friends and going to the cinema, while she went to work. It was very quiet (must have been the school holidays) and we’d buy one movie ticket and as the cinemas were all upstairs, we’d watch one movie and then sneak into another cinema and watch another movie for free and sometimes one more. We thought we were pretty rebellious!

Apart from those early memories, I confess (with much embarrassment) that I recall crying bitterly in my seat when I went to watch E.T. at the Bedfordview Nu-Metro in 1982. I would have been nine years-old. I think it was when they had found E.T. and had him in the quarantined zone and everyone was walking around in plastic suits.

So what did it cost me to go the cinema this weekend?

One admission to The Master at Cinema Nova, Lygon Street: $18
Coke and popcorn combo: $10.50
Parking: $6.60
Hamburger at Gr’lled for dinner: $12
One Corona: $7

Total cost (excluding petrol, toll road): $54.10

Or around 481 Rand at current exchange rate – that would have bought a lot of movies back when I was a kid!

Dodgy operators and scam artists: Seven tips to avoid getting ripped off this Xmas

December 15, 2012December 31, 2012freshlyworded 3 Comments

It’s the festive season, we’re all spending money, buying things, and perhaps – in the spirit of the moment – being a little bit reckless about how we spend it.

As a property and financial journalist I have written about a fair number of sharks, charlatans and scheisters and come across a few in person too.

It’s amazing what people try to get away with – there’s this story about a mortgage broker who conned clients out a $1.1 million and this story about a former professional rugby league player who allegedly pocketed $60,000 meant for his elderly clients,which he received by mistake.

I’ve written about unscrupulous mortgage brokers, dodgy estate agents, greedy financial advisers, but these sorts of people operate at all levels of business from the guy selling you a TV to the charity mugger on the corner of the street.

So here’s some tips to avoid getting into trouble:

If it sounds too good to be true, it is – run!

If someone is offering to double your money in six months or promises a very high rate of return on your investment, chances are they’re up to no good. They’re acting out of greed and playing on your desire for a quick return. If you want a quick return, buy a lottery ticket (and pray) or go to the casino and put an amount you are happy to lose on black or red – that could double your stake in a flash, but at least you know the odds and the risks.

Always get a second opinion

If you think you’re on to a good thing, then present the idea to someone you trust and ask them for their opinion. It can be a professional in the same industry, a help line, a friend, a family member, just so long as its someone who can give you an objective point of view and has nothing to gain by doing so.

Do a Google/internet search

You can find out a great deal of information about someone simply by searching online. Type in the name of the person trying to sell you something and/or the company name and see what results come up. Certainly if your broker or adviser has gotten into professional trouble, you should find some mention of it online. But even if they haven’t you can find out a great deal about someone from online recommendations, their Facebook page, what they say on Twitter, from their blog and their previous roles via their LinkedIn profile etc.

Don’t rush into any decision

Whether you are buying a car, a house or a new TV, you should never feel pressured into making your purchase. Remember, there is no shortage of most things and even if it’s a house or collectible car you really like, if the person selling it to you is pressuring you, you should be suspicious.

Consider at least one or two alternatives products or services

The other day I was shopping for tea (yes just tea) and there must have been about a 100 varieties to choose from. I spent five minutes just locating the type I was after (Rooibos). This is also the case with most things you purchase these days – maybe not a 100 choices but usually a dozen alternatives. Particularly if it’s an expensive item or where the financial commitment is great, you should consider at least one or two alternative products, which may be better and cheaper or have more suitable features. You can do this without even walking into a store, by using a comparison website. Just make sure its a reputable website with a big range of products and full disclosure of how they compare items. ASIC is currently clamping down on dodgy comparison websites.

Ask lots of questions of the salesperson

Don’t be afraid to ask questions, including ones you think may sound silly such as questions about basic information. A good salesman should be happy to answer all of them. Also, by asking a lot of questions you will become better acquainted with the product and the person selling it.

Consider the personality, appearance and attitude of the salesperson

Think about the person who is selling to you. Are they likeable? Do you trust them? Do they have a pleasant manner? It’s amazing how often, after someone has sold you something, they lose complete interest in you, which is OK if you’re buying a shirt, but not so good if you’re buying a new car and it breaks down after a week. Trust your instincts. Avoid dealing with slick, fast-talking sales people who sound like second-hand car dealers (apologies to all honest second-hand car dealers). Buy from someone you like and trust. Why give business to a dick-head?

Happy shopping and spending over the festive season!

A public service initiative from freshlyworded.