In a few weeks will we pass the moment where, in 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations agreed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It had earlier been announced by Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his fourth term as President of the United States of America. No subsequent President has served for more than two terms, because a constitutional change limited later presidents to a maximum of two terms. Eleanor Roosevelt was an important woman of her time, and we have just passed the anniversary of the moment where she declared the Declaration…

Over the past few months I have become more and more aware of, interested even, in what passes for advertising on our commercial TV channels, and on the SBS as well. I don’t watch the ABC much, and have nothing to offer there. I look after my wife in the afternoons, and she will watch TV if there’s nothing else happening, and she likes a set of programs that I am happy to watch as well. I need to declare an interest. Some of my family are involved in commercial TV, and point out to me that my criticisms of…

I was asked some months ago to write something about the US Presidential elections, coming in just a few weeks. This is the first instalment. For those who have lived in both countries, it is pretty basic stuff. But just as there are millions of Americans who simply don’t know that Australia exists, or think it is Austria, there are hundreds of thousands of Australians who think we are just like America. We’re not, and this essay gives some context. Yes, we have a common language, we borrowed their federal system from the US, and a few other things as…

I wanted to write about pain, because I’ve experienced a fair bit of it in the last little while. Also, I felt I didn’t know much about it and it was time to learn more. My hazy view was that physical pain (‘ouch’) was part of the body’s warning system. Don’t do that again, or fix it, were the messages. Then there is the problem of the pain that comes from grief, the loss of a dear one, the ‘woe is me’ pain that seems to be with you forever until, at last you can emerge from the box and…

Election time is approaching in the ACT and in Queensland, with Western Australia early in 2021. We’ve just had an election in the Northern Territory, where Labor won comfortably. One of my interests, as an ageing political scientist, is what will happen as a result, and what they might tell us about ‘the mood of the people’. A second element is the effect that Covid -19 will have on the outcomes, which are likely to be different from State to Territory. A third is the difference in political acceptability between climate change and the pandemic as items in public discussion….

Perhaps I should precede this essay with the sort of solemn warnings we get on television that what we are about to see might shock or worry viewers. If there be such among the readers I apologise in advance. I simply needed to get this experience out of my mind. Earlier in August I entered my 84thyear, and wondered again, as you do at this age, how long I had left. I don’t have a bucket list, neither my wife nor I will travel overseas again, and I am more or less content with what I currently do, write books,…