Broken Record - a new series

Looking back over my various posts, I see recurring themes, in some cases complaints.

I complain often about living in Sydney, that Sydney life is fundamentally uncivilised.

A few days ago I put up a post, Life has just become too bloody complicated, that I then largely deleted because it was too much of a whinge. This post was triggered by my time sheets - I keep personal time sheets recording what I do in ten minute blocks.

When I looked back over these sheets, I could see why I got so little done, why I was so behind. I found that in the preceding fortnight I had less than two hours per day on average including the weekends for personal time, including writing time.

The real killer was the extra travel time associated with current work patterns. Over that fortnight, my average daily travel time was a bit over three hours.

Another example of a recurring theme - an obsession some might say with a degree of fairness - is the damage done to Australia by the disconnection with and sometimes rejection of our own past.

Sometimes we reject it as narrow and racist. At other times, we wrap it in a haze of nostalgia as happened recently with the 1950s. Sometimes we use it as a nationalist symbol as in the preoccupation with our military past. Here I find it sad that that military past sometimes seems the only thing left as an icon on which most Australians can agree. There is a sometimes narrow and inward looking nationalism around in Australia today that past generations would have found very strange, that makes me very uncomfortable.

The reality, at least as I see it, is that the Australian past is not all narrow and racist. The fifties were not some golden age. And British generals were not all incompetent fools trying to kill Australians off.

I have decided to create a new series of posts, the Broken Record series, as a way of sounding-off, of drawing themes together. I know that I already have too many incomplete series, but at least this way I signal to readers that the post is an expression of personal opinion without the attempt at balance that I do try to maintain in my normal posts.

Posts in this series

• 12 August 2007. Broken Record - Risk Avoidance and the Burden of Compliance